Do antivirus and VPN guarantee my online security and privacy?

Antivirus and VPN. Two radically different tools but which resonate “security” in the minds of users. So, reality or fantasy? Are they together the winning duo for my online peace of mind? Let’s clear this up a little.

The security suite, often wrongly reduced to the term antivirus, is the primacy of the security of your device by protecting you from cyberattacks and malware. As a reminder, malware (or malicious software in plain French) refers to any software developed with the aim of altering the behavior of a device in order to harm you, others and in multiple ways.

Nowadays, there are a large number of free antivirus and security suites available on PC, Mac and Android. The iPhone does not benefit from an operating system as open as the other 3, this one has never had the right to an antivirus worthy of the name, and some will also say that it does not. no need.

Free VPNs are also available on many devices and systems, from smartphones to routers to Smart TVs. Its role is not to protect your device, at least not directly, but your navigation by hiding it from potential prying eyes. Let’s see in detail how this “shock duo” works.

Cybersecurity, an ever more important issue

Antiviruses, and by extension security suites, evolve in response to ever more ingenious and plethora of threats. Far from the Trojan horses that infested the IT world in the 90s and 2000s, current threats use sophisticated stratagems to damage the devices of less experienced users. The most popular threats among hackers lately include:

• Social engineering or the psychological manipulation of individuals with the aim of infiltrating a closed network or system. This method aims to exploit human weakness and not security flaws to achieve its ends. One of the most popular examples of this method is phishing, which aims to pose as a legitimate authority and send a fraudulent email to arouse fear in the user, pushing them to download software or click on a link without it. think twice.
• Ransomware is software that will partially or completely encrypt a user’s data and hold it “hostage” against a ransom. In recent years, its ransoms often take the form of a demand for cryptocurrency, which makes the transaction untraceable by the authorities, leaving the victim without possible legal recourse.
• Cryptocurrencies have brought their share of innovations to the world of finance and security, but they have also brought great delight to hackers by allowing the birth of new attacks. Let’s take cryptojacking for example, an attack aimed at infecting a device and using its resources (processor and graphics card) in order to mine cryptocurrencies on behalf of a hacker.

These threats and many others contribute to the resurgence in popularity that antiviruses experienced in 2020 and which continues in 2021.

A VPN, even if as we will see later, does not have security as its primary purpose, can also have its role to play in protecting your device. Although convenient, public Wi-Fi is an ideal sandbox for hackers. Network packet analysis tools, for example, allow data to be intercepted on a local network and are mainly used by network administrators, but malicious individuals can modify them and use them to monitor and intercept traffic. This may contain a lot of sensitive data such as passwords, private messages, banking information, etc. By using a VPN, the data passing between the connected device and the remote server is encrypted and therefore protected from malicious individuals.

Different but complementary roles

Security suite and VPN do not have the same role. The first protects you and the second guarantees your confidentiality. Their communication is clear: a security suite will highlight its protection of the device from software threats distributed by malicious individuals or organizations while VPNs will articulate their communication operations around the less than commendable intentions of governments, institutions and legal organizations like GAFAM, always more fond of Internet users’ data.

What exactly does a security suite protect me from?

Today more than ever, many threats exist, constantly changing form to deceive the vigilance of antiviruses, guided by skillful fingers and artificial intelligence increasingly used by cybercriminals. Security suites also evolve over time, utilizing the power of the cloud and machine learning to detect and index a new threat the minute it is discovered. The need to have a security suite keeping an eye on your machine is therefore still present.

VPN: Privacy (and More)

Antivirus therefore protects against threats wanting to infiltrate your device, but what about the confidentiality of your data? This is where a VPN comes in. By providing network-level protection, it helps protect your digital life from prying eyes who spy on your navigation from one site to another using third-party cookies. We think in particular of internet service providers, more or less authoritarian governments but also of advertisers of which Google and Facebook are the leaders. A VPN helps protect against this spying by encrypting the data that passes between your device and the provider’s servers.

The uses of a VPN don’t stop at protecting your data. The service allows you to have access to geo-blocked content or to pass firewalls imposed by governments such as Great Wall of China. A VPN also allows peer-to-peer downloading without legal constraints. The risks of coming across malware using this protocol are however very present, and an antivirus will not be too much trouble to analyze the files thus obtained.

Beware of free VPN services

With prices sometimes high, subscribing to a VPN subscription and an antivirus offer separately can quickly hurt your wallet and it can be tempting to skip one or the other in favor of a free offer : bad idea.

Apart from a few rare exceptions, free VPNs are often insecure and lack a good privacy policy and technical means to prove their good intentions.

When it comes to free antiviruses, when they are the flagship of a reputable paid version, you can trust them. However, make sure they tick the boxes you need; in many cases, there is no miracle, paying will give you much more guarantees… and peace of mind.

VPN, antivirus… rather twice than once!

In recent years, more and more security suites have chosen to include a VPN in their offering, proof of the compatibility and necessity of both services to ensure protection on all fronts. With no noticeable impact on performance, why not use the two together?