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It’s important to remember that the computers we nowadays take for granted in our everyday lives are machines. As such they need to be taken care of and, if treated properly, their overall lifecycle can be greatly improved. There are many programs out there that promise to protect your computer, but a good antivirus and VPN solution are the best first line of defense.
Many times it’s fairly easy to utilize both tools as they typically live in harmony with one another, working together like two old friends. But in some other cases this coexistence is not quite as peaceful, and instead the two tools may declare open war on one another. But before throwing your computer out of the window in a fit of rage trying to discover the solution or wasting money on other software that still may not work, there are simple tweaks here and there that will solve the problem.
Any good antivirus is typically composed of both firewall and SSL monitoring functions, and usually any conflicts between this solution and your favorite VPN emerge from this very point. Some antivirus programs can interact with and block port 443, which is what VPNs use for SSL connections. Fortunately, this is easy to work around and doesn’t require uninstalling either the antivirus or the VPN. To solve this problem search in the antivirus settings for an option to toggle between active or inactive SSL monitoring. Disable it and the VPN should work alongside the installed antivirus without any issue.
When it comes to firewalls, the method is almost the same since it requires some tweaks within the antivirus settings as well. This obviously depends on how each company designs their antivirus client and what they allow you to change, but some of the more advanced providers include whitelists. These should be empty at first, and just to be safe it’s best to always add your VPN client to it after installation, even before giving the antivirus a chance to block it. However, if there’s no whitelist and you can’t control which programs the antivirus should and shouldn’t trust, in some cases it’s enough to reset the firewall to do the trick.
On a side note, website advisors are quite a common feature that come with many antivirus tools, and they can be useful for finding out about how trustworthy a VPN may be, especially those that are advertised as free. VPN software and apps need to be downloaded after all, and a red warning when accessing any given VPN site is not something to be taken lightly since these are tools that are supposed to increase security.
The VPN world is in constant changing and these tools already play a big role in our online security. In fact, while they aren’t antiviruses and will never replace one of these programs, some of the best VPNs come with their own additional security measures, such as firewalls, website advisors and more.
Many times these features are included in a security bundle by antivirus companies, and while the prices sometimes may seem a bit exaggerated, in the long term it can prove to be a reliable investment. Avira, for instance, is a well-known antivirus provider that has several different plans, some of them also including their own Phantom VPN. In turn, when installing the latter it’s also possible to install a browser security tool, for instance, which allows safer web searching, even if the antivirus itself is not active.
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