I was recently informed that some IT consultants advise their nonprofit clients to use free-for-personal-use antivirus software at their organizations. While perhaps well-intentioned advice, theft is arguably not the best software policy for a nonprofit organization. Further, nonprofits have access to some incredibly discounted and legitimately free antivirus options. So rather than exploring ethical quandaries, let's instead take a more practical look at a handful of common antivirus options available for nonprofit, commercial, and home use.

First, a few quick notes

Antivirus will almost certainly not cover all of an organization's security needs. The computer virus is only one of many types of threats - including worms, phishing attacks, rootkits, trojan horses, and others - that computer users need to guard against. Many antivirus solutions include protections against some or all of these attacks or are bundled as part of security suites, which include additional protective tools. In the interest of keeping this survey as "apples-to-apples" as possible, I've focused solely on antivirus tools to the extent possible. However, antivirus is better considered in the context of a broader security plan.

In addition, while I have personally tested each of these applications, I am not commenting on the suitability of any product for any organization's particular security needs.

Finally, there are many dozens of antivirus packages available; I've selected six to compare, tried them, and researched pricing options. Feel free to contribute a comment if your experiences differ or if your favorite is not listed.

The summary

Cutting right to the chase, here's a summary of the six antivirus products, sorted in descending order by apparent cost to nonprofit organizations (unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to find exact nonprofit pricing).

Suggestions

For organizations ...

If your organization has any budget whatsoever and you qualify forTechSoup Stock, Norton AntiVirus is probably your best bet. Costing just a few dollars per machine per year, Norton AntiVirus is easy to use, a product nearly any IT consultant or staff should be comfortable with, and improved in performance with recent versions. If your organization does not qualify for TechSoup, consider applying for nonprofit discounts on Avast! or AVG; both are solid products and offer nonprofit discounts apart from TechSoup (a blessing and a curse, that). All three of these products are available as full-featured security packages.

If you have absolutely no budget or do not qualify for nonprofit pricing, consider ClamWin or Comodo. As I mentioned above, I cannot really recommend the current beta Comodo antivirus, since it proved unstable in my testing. Other Colorado nonprofits are reportedly happy with Comodo, though, so it may be worth considering and testing in your environment. ClamWin is actually the antivirus used presently on all Windows PCs at T4T, but because it lacks active scanning, I hesitate to recommend it to less tech-savvy users.

For home users ...

A number of software developers have generously granted free licenses of their antivirus software to home users, including AVG and Avast! as listed above. I have a slight preference for Avast!, but either is an excellent choice for the home user at an unbeatable price ($0).

Conclusion

While I limited myself to just six, here are a few other antivirus software products you may want to look at:

• BitDefender - When a new version is released, the previous version is made available at no charge.
• Kaspersky - Considered by some to be the very best.
• Avira - Free for home use, Avira is a bit annoying with its "nag" screens.

A Denver-area executive director recently commented to me that regarding software licenses, "We stay above board with that; it's only fair." While it is very nice that many companies give away their products free for personal, noncommercial use, it is arguably tacky to abuse this generosity. Please consider these alternatives and share them with any IT consultants or nonprofit staff who may not be aware of the options available to nonprofits. And if you have any personal experience or expertise to share, please do leave a comment and let us know about it.