Deciding How Often to Get Antivirus Updates

Some questions crop up often — “Does my computer have a virus?” “How do I scan for a virus?” “Does Dick Clark wear a toupee?” — But the most-often-asked question about antivirus programs is, “How often should I get updates?” If I was more of a blarney artist, I would attempt to impress you (or bore you) with statistics that would tell you precisely how often to update your virus-signature files. Instead, I’ll provide a shortcut, a simple answer that lays out some practical approaches and why it’s reasonable to use them:

Always-on, broadband Internet connection: If your computer is connected to the Internet all the time, update your signature files at least once or twice each day. If you work with sensitive data that you can’t afford to lose, updating up to six times a day would be better. On a slow news day, this might be construed as overkill, and any more than six times a day would be overkill. But sometimes a really nasty virus is on the loose and multiple variants are popping up every day. If you have to continue your work on a day like this, hunker down and update your signatures every hour or two until the crisis passes.

Dial-up Internet connection: You can update less frequently because your computer isn’t such an attractive target to viruses. Generally you’re at lower risk of infection because an always-on connection (which generally requires lots of bandwidth) isn’t practical for dial-up use. With normal dial-up, you’re offline (and unavailable to viruses) much of the time, so updating once (or sometimes twice) a week is fine. If you update virus signatures more often over a dial-up connection (say, once or twice daily), it could add to your monthly connect charges.

On-the-edge computer habits: If you’re a wee bit paranoid, or if you’re computing habits are high-risk, then you could try to update as often as once each hour. Antivirus makers don’t charge extra for obsessive updating, but consider this: Is their latest update likely to change that fast? Would it be simpler to change your habits?