According to the results of a survey conducted by Avira, two thirds of antivirus users have tested more than one security product during the past twelve months and one in four have turned off their antivirus protection because of performance problems.

A number of over 9,000 Avira users from around the world took the survey last month and the results suggest that system performance is still a major issue for a lot of them.

"The scary take-away from this survey is that 25 percent of the respondents admitted to just turning off their security products because they feel that it hurt the performance of the machine," says Sorin Mustaca, data security expert at Avira.

"That’s not a good idea because such a practice leaves the computer totally exposed to the even simplest of viruses, allowing the bad guys to include it in a botnet used to distribute malware and phishing," he explains.

It's, therefore, no wonder that almost 63% of questioned users said they tried multiple security programs this year. This was likely done in search of an antivirus with lower impact on system resources.

One possible solution to this problem is server-assisted malware scanning technology and the unloading of other tasks to the cloud, something which many companies have already begun implementing.

"Cloud data processing is ideal for reducing the load on a local machine," Costin Raiu, director of Kaspersky Lab's Global Research and Analysis Team, told us in a recent interview.

"First of all, cloud computing allows parallel data processing, i.e. it is ideal for tasks which can be divided into several parts and processed simultaneously, thus getting quicker results. This is crucial for current antivirus products," he added.

Another interesting figure revealed by Avira's survey is that 12% of respondents considered not using the Internet at all because of safety reasons, which is not practical at all, but stands to show that users are aware of the risks and want light, but yet reliable, AV products.