Antivirus Program Articles

Portable Antivirus Software- Not a lot of people know what portable antivirus software is. That is one of the main reasons we wrote this portable antivirus software review. Keep reading our portable antivirus software to get your questions answered.

With the movement of data and applications to the cloud and the movement of human beings hither and yon, you may sometimes find yourself choosing or needing to work on an important document on an unfamiliar computer. How do you keep your files safe? That’s where portable antivirus software comes in.

Portable antivirus software may also be useful for doubling up malware checks without having two competing products actually running on your computer (which could spell trouble). In addition, if your installed antivirus program is disabled, a portable antivirus software may provide the means to recovery.

Portable applications are software programs that can run without needing to be installed onto a computer, leaves no footprint, and carries its settings with it. Generally, they can be carried on a variety of removable storage devices that have sufficient storage capacity, including USB drives, flash cards, iPods, mobile hard drives, CDs, or even floppy disks. As long as the storage device has sufficient capacity to hold the program, as long as the media can be connected to the computer, and as long as there is a match between the version of the computer operating system and the version of the application, the program should run.

If the program you use is meant to receive updates, this will not automatically get transferred to the point of storage. You will have to make sure that the updates get installed, which may involve recopying the program to the storage device, reburning the CD, etc.

Portable antivirus software is available both as paid applications and freeware. It is often available from software manufacturers who sell complete computer antivirus systems. Sample products include:

ClamWin Portable is a free, open source, portable version of ClamWin Antivirus that features good virus and spyware detection and regular updates to the virus database. It’s unclear if it works with Windows 7 and some reviews rate it as very poor at catching viruses and extremely slow.

MicroWorld Free Antivirus provides an antivirus scan and a network activity monitor, so you can see if anybody besides you is interacting with the computer you’re using.

Mx One Antivirus for USB Thumbdrive and Pendrive offers real-time protection and is able to detect and remove any viruses that might try to infect your storage device. Note that the free version is ad-supported and is not reported to run work with Windows 7 yet.

Naevius USB Antivirus is offered as ad-supported freeware or for sale as a full version, however according to cNET users, both McAfee and Avast identify the download of Naevius as itself containing a virus. It is suggested that you either verify that this has been rectified or avoid downloading this product.

Neo Security Flash is shareware that gives you a free trial prior to buying and allows you to compress and transfer files, as well as analysis and disinfection of a computer to which you connect a storage device. It can also quarantine files.

Portable Dr. Web CureIt is free for home computers and available for purchase for office or customer machines. It will find and cure files, place infected files in quarantine, and do a full or custom scan.

Rootkit Revealer is a focused antivirus tool, aimed only at advanced detection of rootkits published at the RootKit website. It does not aim to uncover rootkits that are not hidden, nor does it do anything besides reveal them: the rest is up to the user.

Trend Micro HouseCall Portable App Antivirus, which will work with Windows 7 and 64-bit operating systems, is designed to save your infected system rather than focusing on portable use from a storage device.

TrustPort Antivirus USB Edition is shareware with a free trial and designed specifically for USB flash drives to protect the drive and disallow the copying of infected files to it, while also enabling scans of the connected computer.

TrendMicro

Comodo

Computer Assoc.