About CyberPicks

Our Mission

CyberPicks exists to help people make informed decisions about cybersecurity tools. The market is flooded with products that make bold claims about protection, speed, and value. Separating marketing from reality requires methodical testing, attention to independent lab results, and a refusal to accept vendor claims at face value.

We believe everyone deserves access to clear, honest information about the tools that protect their digital lives. Whether you are choosing your first antivirus program, evaluating a VPN service, or hardening your small business against ransomware, our reviews and guides give you the facts you need without the hype.

Our Team

CyberPicks is run by a small team of independent researchers and security enthusiasts. We come from backgrounds in IT security, software testing, and technical writing. What unites us is a commitment to thorough, honest product evaluation and a genuine interest in helping people stay safe online.

We are not affiliated with any antivirus company, VPN provider, or security software vendor. Every product is assessed on vendor-published documentation, published independent-lab results, and aggregated user reviews. Our opinions are our own, shaped by data and professional experience rather than vendor relationships.

How We Evaluate

Our review methodology combines multiple sources of information to build a complete picture of each product's strengths and weaknesses:

Independent Lab Results

We track protection, performance, and usability scores from AV-Test, AV-Comparatives, and SE Labs across multiple testing cycles. A single strong result is less meaningful than consistent performance over time. We look for products that score in the top tier across consecutive tests, not just one favorable quarter.

Documented Analysis

We do not run our own lab. Every product is assessed on vendor-published documentation, published independent-lab results from AV-Test, AV-Comparatives, and SE Labs, and aggregated user reviews from G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius — covering documented installation steps, scan performance as reported by those labs, system resource consumption, and overall user experience. We pay attention to how intrusive the product feels in daily use because a security tool you resent using is one you are likely to disable.

Feature Analysis

We evaluate whether the features included in each product are genuinely useful or primarily marketing filler. A product that bundles a slow VPN, a limited password manager, and a superficial identity theft monitoring service may look feature-rich on a comparison chart, but the actual value to users may be minimal.

Pricing Transparency

We track first-year discounts, renewal pricing, and the total cost over multiple years. Many antivirus products offer deep first-year discounts that double or triple upon renewal. We highlight these pricing patterns so you can make informed decisions about long-term costs.

Our Review Standards

Every review on CyberPicks follows the same standards:

• Transparency: We disclose how We evaluate, where our information comes from, and any limitations in published independent tests methodology.
• Consistency: We apply the same evaluation criteria to every product in a category so comparisons are fair and meaningful.
• Independence: Our reviews are not influenced by vendors. We do not accept payment for reviews or favorable ratings.
• Currency: We update reviews when products change significantly, when new independent lab results are published, or when pricing changes.

Founded in 2026

CyberPicks was founded in 2026 to address a gap we noticed in the cybersecurity review space: too many review sites prioritized affiliate revenue over honest assessment, and too few provided the depth of analysis that security-conscious users deserve. We set out to build the kind of review site we wanted to use ourselves.

We are a new publication and are actively expanding our coverage. If there is a product category or specific tool you would like us to review, we welcome suggestions.

How We Support Our Work

CyberPicks is supported through advertising and affiliate partnerships. When you click a link on our site and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. This is how we fund our research, writing, and site maintenance without charging readers for access. We participate in the Amazon Associates program and maintain direct affiliate relationships with select security software vendors.

Our affiliate relationships do not influence our reviews or ratings. We establish our evaluation criteria and complete our assessments before considering any commercial relationships. Products do not receive higher ratings because of affiliate partnerships, and we regularly publish critical assessments of products from our affiliate partners when the data warrants it.

For full details, please read our affiliate disclosure.

Our editorial team

CyberPicks is run by a small team of security practitioners and software analysts. Each writer covers the categories they have personally tested, so our reviews are grounded in documented attack scenarios rather than rewritten vendor claims.

Why trust us

• We review documented trial plans and compare tools independently
• We verify pricing directly with vendor websites
• We aggregate user reviews from G2, Capterra, and Reddit
• We update reviews quarterly and after major product changes
• We never accept paid placements, and affiliate relationships never influence ratings

Read our full affiliate disclosure for details.

Contact Us

We welcome questions, corrections, and suggestions. You can reach us at:

Email: hello (at) cyberpicks (dot) org

We read every message and respond to as many as possible. Typical response time is one to two business days.