Question about anti-virus and Sonar

I run Avast on my daw with no issues.
(knock on wood)

I guess my biggest issue with Norton's, is that there is no way to get it out of the way. It does background tasks and wants to phone home all of the time, even if you tel it not to. I wouldn't use it at all except it comes with my Xfinity cable and internet. Also it's a real pain in the arse to get rid of if I decide not to keep it. 

From my years working in IT my experience with Norton's is throw it away it treads all over everything and is far to intrusive.

Personally I use Avast(free) on my internet PC and Microsoft defender on my DAW.  I keep them up to date manually. 

Chris in Indy
My question is to those of you that do not keep your DAW/computer connected to the internet, as I do. I only allow it to be connected during download times from Cake or EW. When I used my command center to update my subscription just the other day, the Cake site threw me back into my browser (Chrome) as part of the process. I was inundated with pop-ups and suggested sights of all various sorts.

My opinion is not the popular one but here it is - you should be connected to the internet daily and updating your software regularly. That is the best defence against viruses and the like. With internet threats changing all the time and using a browser being an essential part of using most software these days, it doesn't make sense to try and live in a bubble when you know you'll have to emerge from time to time. Better to keep your virtual immune system topped up - which means regular updates to your operating system and browser, as soon as they become available.
 
For similar reasons there is little point installing anti-virus software these days - even assuming it is effective (which is often is not), it needs to update regularly to stand any chance of protecting your system, but any serious threats will be addressed by your browser or operating system directly via a very similar auto-update mechanism anyway. Anti-virus can theoretically provide some extra protection in the rare cases when you install software downloaded from the internet but practically the chance of you accidentally downloading something infected without having chosen to go to a disreputable site in the first place is a million-to-one.
 
Summary: be online, use a single browser daily, install all updates when they're offered to you.

My DAW-system is for music only. I use Microsoft Security Essentials (or whatever it's called inside Win10): it works well with Sonar and does not interfere in real-time that I've noticed. If I have a file I want to check, I use virus total.