For years I kept my DAW off the internet except when I was initially loading the software on.  Anti-virus would bog down my pathetic old system.
 
Now that i've upgraded to a new machine (i5-5200CPU, 16Gb RAM), i'm thinking that it might be nice to reconnect with the world.  I tried installing McAfee, and even stopping everything I could, it still strained my system.  A simple handful of audio tracks and a couple of low-end VSTs, and I'd have unusable latency and dropouts.  This doesn't seem right, this PC should be able to what seems to be a normal load.
 
What are others doing to keep their PCs clean, working, and still connected?

I use Bitdefender Total Security...never had a problem...
and very unintrusive...it's also been rated #1....

You can get it here for 80% off right now...quite a good deal

http://newsletter.azadinetwork.com/e/campaigns/zz248wzro1f90/track-url/ts5285ypg8af7/a2ca4fc4519ec2207ea456421fdb2c1f123e1dd4

You can get McAfee Internet Security completely free here

http://newsletter.azadine...8f2fd7fb8bd84933fff2a7

I just use the Microsoft security in Win 10. I only visit sites related to my music software on the DAW, I have an old Vista PC for email and general browsing, on that one I use Bullgaurd which seems OK.

I still use AVG free on all my machines - never had a problem
Nigel
 

Anyone using on a Mac?

i use nothing, zero, zilch, zip, nada, further more i disable windows defender and anything associated with it. never had a problem, my pc's are connected to the net whenever they are switched on, but i only update daw's, certain plugins etc that update from within, no surfing or anything, none the less they are connected.
 
i use this laptop to surf, email, whatever on the net and it has avast, everything else is downloaded by this machine and stored on external drives, and anything that gets to my daw pc's must come through/from here. i don't let windows 10 update, that's been switched off since july,  like i said never had a problem, been doing it like this since 1998, after a certain point i don't let windows update any longer. i scan my networked machines ever 6 or so months, never found anything.
 
not really concerned about virus's etc, i believe good computer/internet habits are most of the battle, regular disk images and backups take care of any doubt that remains, regardless of what happens, unless it's hardware failure i would be back up in 15/20 minutes as if nothing had happened

OK, here's the deal.  If you dedicate your PC to DAW function only, and only go online to update it, you are relatively safe.
 
But the new wave of web exploits means any browser that can connect with a web server is at risk of "malvertising".  This means that bad guys can insert web exploit kits into advertisements in mainstream websites.  They can get away with this because the third party ad brokers that the mainstream sites partner with don't screen their ad customers very well.
 
So if you go online, and don't have good protection, you could be the next victim of a cryptolocker ransomware  attack.
 
Of the previously mentioned mitigations, a regular disk imaging solution offers a good recovery plan. 
 
But if you plan to use the computer for multi-purpose activity, you should have real-time protection.
 
From the test reports that I have read, Avira, Bitdefender, and Kaspersky have near flawless test results against real-world malware threats.
 
Avira and Bitdefender offer excellent freeware versions, that you can switch off the real-time protection with when you are not online.  So you can avoid the system performance hit when running your DAW, and have top notch protection when surfing the web.  I use both, on different computers.  Avira works well on my DAW, without any conflict.
 
https://www.avira.com/en/free-antivirus-windows
 
http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/free.html

Wow, it looks like more people than I thought don't surf the 'net on their DAW.
I'd like to, so will take a look at bitdefender, avg, and avira. The cost is less significant than the CPU drain...

Thanks for the suggestions.

I don't surf on my DAW, but it is connected to the net and I use MS Essentials on win 7. I have a laptop that also has my DAW SW and it's a general purpose machine (win 10) - on that and this old machine (vista) that I surf with I have Panda Free and I haven't had any problems.

I have Avast antivirus running literally all the time on any of my computers that run Sonar, and have no performance issues from it.
 
I DO have every computer's Avast software's "Exclusion List" populated with specific paths where I do NOT want Avast to scan everything, and that seems to be the key to it all working well performance-wise.
 
So, by adding one or more paths to an antivirus software's Exclusion List, it lets Avast scan everything BUT what is contained within the excluded paths.
 
For MY computers. I have the following types of paths excluded from being scanned by Avast:
 
Sample Libraries (3+ Terabytes of samples)
Cakewalk Content (All of the Rapture Pro, Dimension Pro, Rapture, Session Drummer 3, etc.)
Cakewalk Projects
 
Some folks add additional libraries, but basically the sample libraries are all scanned during download and installation, and it is only after any of that when I added them to the exclusions, so the zillions of little and big files that make up the samples for the sample-based instruments are already thoroughly checked for viruses, and those files are all static - read only, other than the occasional tweak.  So, they just don't need to be scanned every time I open any of them to load into a Cakewalk project.  
 
Adding the above kinds of paths helps things run a whole bunch faster, without any weakening of my defenses - the files WERE all scanned, so, now Avast just skips all the extra overhead of checking them out every time I load a giant piano sample or whatever.
 
Bob Bone