There was a time whe it was normal to run about 5 programs; usually Spybot, adaware, McAfee or Norton antivirus, anti-keylogger and anti-rootkit

Those days are gone. Now you can get one or two programs that block these kinds of things or clean them out if you get them

They also update their "definitions" so they are always up-to-date on the latest nasties making the rounds

Alog with a secure browser, especially FireFox, common sense, use of webmail and keeping private material on securely stored Flash drives or SD cards where prying eyes cannot find it, you have about 6 layers of security that a nasty or snoop has to get through. Teamed up with Backup and Recovery for WHEN any disaster happens, it is as good as it gets and you are usually back up and running in a couple of hours instead of a week

THE BEST OF THE BEST FREE, HOME PROTECTION and Avast and MalwareBytes play nice together, too