Business Choice Awards 2020: Security Software

Using a work PC—or maybe your own PC for work—without some security software as protection is a big no-no. It'll get you in trouble with the IT department, and if you don't have IT, it'll get you in trouble, period, once you subcumb to an inevitable attack by all the malware passively and actively targeting you. Thankfully, software security suites full of antivirus protection and more abound. We asked PCMag readers to rate the security software they use for work, in particular if it was assigned to them. The vendor they picked as the best may surprise you.

Security Software 2020

Business Choice seal Webroot
Now a two-time winner for home use in our Readers' Choice survey, Webroot's also got plenty of happy customers on the business side. It shot ahead of last year's dual winners to take the top spot for 2020 with unbeatable scores in every category we measure.

Last year's shared winners, Malwarebytes and Bitdefender, are still fantastic choices for work PC protection software, according to our readers. Malwarebytes had an overall score of 9.0 last year and dropped only a smidge to 8.9 this time around; Bitdefender kept the same 9.0 it had. But both of them couldn't keep up with the improvement from Webroot, maker of SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete. Las year it had an already excellent 8.9 out of 10 overall satisfaction score; for 2020, that number shot up to 9.3.

Click through all the categories above and you'll see that not only is Webroot's overall score massively impressive, it's the top pick in every other category. Our second most important measure for picking a winner is the likelihood to recommend score, where Webroot's 9.4 is a stunner. That same question is used to determine the Net Promoter Score (NPS) earned by the brand, wherein the percentage of "promoters" minus "detractors" indicate brand loyalty; Webroot's NPS of 81 (out of 100) puts it in an upper echelon seldom seen even by the best brands for any product.

Other stellar scores for Webroot include ease of use (9.4), setup (9.5), reliability (9.4), and PC performance (9.5). Essentially what our readers are saying is that if IT has saddled you with some other kind of security software, you should be requesting a switch to Webroot's tools, tout de suite.

But while Webroot stands out, a few other brands did quite well in our survey. Bitdefender's second place status is bolstered with great scores for reliability (9.2) and trust in the product (9.1). Malwarebytes and Microsoft (which provides built-in antivirus in Windows) both earn a 9.2 for both ease of use and setup. Kaspersky Lab is middle of the road on most scores, but has a nice 8.8 score for trust in the software it makes to protect a PC.

The low end of the results go to AVG (8.2 overall) and McAfee (8.1), which sadly stand out in these results for how little they're trusted or recommended, at least in comparison to the brands above. Still, that's an improvement for McAfee, which last year only had a 7.2 overall satisfaction rating and earned a -18 NPS.

See all of our survey results for security software.

The PCMag Business Choice survey for Security Software was in the field from from November 25, 2019, through December 16, 2019. For more information on how the survey is conducted, read the survey methodology.

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About Our Expert

Eric Griffith

Senior Editor, Features

My Experience

I've been writing about computers, the internet, and technology professionally since 1992, more than half of that time with PCMag. I arrived at the end of the print era of PC Magazine as a senior writer. I served for a time as managing editor of business coverage before settling back into the features team for the last decade and a half. I write features on all tech topics, plus I handle several special projects, including the Readers' Choice and Business Choice surveys and yearly coverage of the Best ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, Best Products of the Year, and Best Brands (plus the Best Brands for Tech Support, Longevity, and Reliability).

I started in tech publishing right out of college, writing and editing stories about hardware and development tools. I migrated to software and hardware coverage for families, and I spent several years exclusively writing about the then-burgeoning technology called Wi-Fi. I was on the founding staff of several magazines, including Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine. All of which are now defunct, and it's not my fault. I have freelanced for publications as diverse as Sony Style, Playboy.com, and Flux. I got my degree at Ithaca College in, of all things, television/radio. But I minored in writing so I'd have a future.

In my long-lost free time, I wrote some novels, a couple of which are not just on my hard drive: BETA TEST ("an unusually lighthearted apocalyptic tale," according to Publishers' Weekly) and a YA book called KALI: THE GHOSTING OF SEPULCHER BAY. Go get them on Kindle.

I work from my home in Ithaca, NY, and did it long before pandemics made it cool.

The Technology I Use

My first computer was a Laser 128, an Apple II-compatible clone with an integrated keyboard, matched with an eye-straining monochrome green monitor. I used it to type papers in college for other people for money...until I discovered the Mac SE in the college computer room. That changed my life. My first cellphone was a Samsung Uproar—the silver one with the built-in MP3 player from the Napster days (the pre-iPod era).

I use an iPhone 15 Pro hourly and an iPad Air infrequently (but I'm always in the market for a cheap Android tablet). I have a PlayStation 5 just to play Spider-Man, and several Windows machines, including a work-issued Lenovo ThinkPad. I talk to Alexa and Siri all day long. I do the majority of my computing on a 15-inch LG Gram laptop attached to a Thunderbolt hub to run a multi-monitor setup—I overdid it on the power needed to simply work from home.

I'm most at home in Microsoft Word after decades of writing there. More and more, I turn to services like Google Docs, using tools like Grammarly. I use Google's Chrome browser due to an addiction to several extensions I think I can't live without, but probably could. I use Excel extensively on data-intensive stories, but for chart creation, we've switched over entirely to using Infogram for interactive features that are hard to find elsewhere. I do a lot of graphics work for my stories, but limit myself to the free and amazing Paint.NET software to edit images.

I'm a firm evangelist for using the cloud for backup and syncing of files; I'm primarily using Dropbox, which has never failed me, but I also have redundant setups on Microsoft OneDrive, plus extra picture backups on Amazon Photos and iCloud. Why take chances? For entertainment, mine is a streaming-only household—my kid has never seen network TV and barely been exposed to commercials, thanks to Roku and Amazon Music. The house is peppered with smart speakers from Amazon for instant gratification and control of smart home devices like multiple Wyze cameras and Nest Protect smoke detectors. I've got accounts on all the major social networks, to my horror. I have a robot vacuum for each floor of the house. I want a 3D printer, but not sure what I'd use it for.

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