anti virus

[confusedman]

im new to sky broadband and see it comes with sky shield, this may be a daft question but do i still need to have anti virus software on my laptop or is sky shield sufficient ?

[GD1]

@confusedman  A good antivirus/malware is always recommended on your PC regardless of any ISP provided security features.

[TimmyBGood]

@confusedman 

Sky Shield is basic online content filtering: that's completely different in functionality to a desktop antivirus programme.

Having said that, I've not seen an actual virus for at least a decade.  There's certainly malware around, but again, not the same thing.

[mae-3]

@confusedman 

With Windows these days it comes with protection included (Windows defender) in the service which stops most stuff but if you are visiting dodgy sites then an additional anti-virus/anti-malware package may be wise. 

Broadband Shield isn't an effective intelligent service for blocking this stuff.

[mae-3]

@confusedman 

The only difference between anti-virus packages, including Windows Defender,  is the more expensive ones usually offer faster response to updates against a breakout which these days doesn't occur often!

Broadband Shield isn't an effective firewall it is only a NAT and DNS filtering for protecting on the wire one would need a full hardware firewall with cloud intellgence, eg: OPNsense & Zenarmor as an example.