About Shield Shelf

In 2022 the company I work for got ransomwared. One phishing link. One employee. Three weeks of recovery, every endpoint reimaged, and a bill I'd rather not think about. I was the IT admin managing the cleanup.

After that I stopped trusting marketing sheets. I bought subscriptions to eleven different antivirus and endpoint protection suites over the next two years and ran them on real machines: a Windows work box, a Mac mini I use for media, and a Windows 11 gaming rig. Six months minimum per suite. Real install, real scans, real CPU draw, real renewal price when the intro discount expires.

This site is where I write up what I found. Not what the vendor says it does. What it did, on my hardware, over time. I'm not a security researcher and I'm not a SOC analyst. I'm an IT admin in Charlotte, North Carolina who got careless once and decided to stop being naive about it.

Get to know the tester behind these reviews on the author page.

Some links here are affiliate links. If you buy a subscription through one, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend suites I have paid for and tested myself. Full editorial details here.