BitDefender Antivirus 2011

Price: $19.95

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BitDefender Antivirus is a product of the popular company BitDefender. Both the BitDefender Antivirus 2011 and BitDefender Total Security 2011 have different user interfaces for users of varying technical levels. The security software is especially helpful for gamers and parents, but offers robust all-round protection for everyone, including the technically savvy.
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During installation of Bitdefender Antivirus, questions prompt the installer to set the initial user mode. Novice mode presents no tabs, having only big buttons to check for updates and scan for viruses, and there is a third button to launch game mode, backup or parental controls. Intermediate mode adds tabs for backup, tune-up, security and network management, plus a status dashboard. Expert mode gives instant access to all program features and settings. We installed it in Expert mode for this review.
There is one useful cosmetic improvement over last year's version of the suite: the controls now offer a visible response to a click.
AV-Test gave BitDefender their best rating of Very Good at detecting proactive malware. For malware detection, low false positives, and fast response time, the product rated Excellent. BitDefender's scan speed was found to be only Satisfactory, and for spyware detection it attained only an above average rating - however, their tests were based on the 2010 edition, and the 2011 edition might perform better in their next round of tests.
West Coast Labs and ICSA Labs certify Bitdefender Antivirus 2011 technology for virus detection and removal. West Coast adds checkmarks for general malware and Trojan detection. A false positive snatched Virus Bulletin's latest VB100% award from BitDefender, though it passed seven of their last ten tests. AV-Comparatives.org awarded BitDefender their second-best rating of ADVANCED. Again, it was false positives that prevented it from attaining ADVANCED+.
BitDefender detected every threat on our test systems. It was able to remove some of them during the scan, with others it asked what to do at the end of the scan. We chose 'Quarantine' for all of them - if that didn't work, we chose 'Delete'. Sometimes the delete failed, leaving 'No action is possible'. Normal users would at this point contact technical support for help with manual cleanup.
For a third of the threats, BitDefender left behind executable files, and two of the threats were still running. There were also many registry traces and files left behind. In our malware removal test BitDefender scored 8.5 out of 10, beaten only by the beta version of Norton Antivirus which scored 9, and Panda Global Protection 2009 which scored 8.7. BitDefender tied with the Norton beta for first place in the commercial keylogger test, scoring 7.5 points.
In a scareware (rogue security software) test, BitDefender scored 8.3, well above average, and it detected 88 percent of malware and keyloggers which used rootkit technology, scoring 6.5 points, a little above average. Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware 1.36, eScan Internet Security Suite 10, Panda and the Norton Internet Security 2011 beta all scored 7 against scareware.
BitDefender's malware detection is signature-based. Unknown files are sent by its B-Have module to a 'sandbox' environment where they are monitored for suspicious behavior. In the latest edition there is a third layer called Active Virus Control, which keeps an eye on any programs that make it through the initial stages and disables any that misbehave.
We found this three-layered approach to be extremely effective. On opening a folder containing downloaded malware samples, three-quarters of them were destroyed immediately by BitDefender. After launching the remaining samples, 97 percent of all threats were detected and for most of them installation was blocked. BitDefender scored 9.4 points in this test, the same as Prevx 3.0. This score was beaten only by the Norton Internet Security 2011 beta's 9.6 points.
In a separate keylogger blocking test, BitDefender scored 7.5 points, a little above average. It performed better at rootkit blocking, with 7.2 points. Along with Panda Cloud Antivirus, Webroot AntiVirus with AntiSpyware 6.1, and the beta of Norton Internet Security 2011, BitDefender scored a perfect 10 out of 10 for blocking scareware (rogue internet security software).
We tried to re-download malware samples (those who’s URLs were still valid, anyway). The URLs weren't blocked as malicious, but BitDefender blocked 40 percent of the samples as soon as the download started. This is a real improvement over the previous version, but there is still room for improvement in cleaning up detected malware.
BitDefender had roughly the same impact on system performance as Kaspersky Antivirus. BitDefender slowed boot time a little. Browsing was slowed by 29 percent, against Kaspersky's 22 percent. The file moving and copying test was slowed by 23 percent, against Kaspersky's 27 percent. The automated Windows Installer test was slowed by 70 percent, against Kaspersky's 78 percent. The zip/unzip test was slowed by 54 percent against Kaspersky's 28 percent. Last year's version of BitDefender more than doubled the time in this test.
BitDefender's first full scan took a little longer than average at 40 minutes. As with most of the rival suites, BitDefender uses an intelligent activity-based system to ignore known-good files, so subsequent scans took only a couple of minutes.
Conclusion: The new version of BitDefender performed much better in the system impact tests than previous versions had done.
The antispam component of BitDefender works with Windows Mail, Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird. POP3 e-mail is analyzed and spam messages are automatically diverted into "Deleted Items". BitDefender's antispam doesn't insist on Bayesian training before being used, as does Kaspersky Internet Security 2011, but training is recommended. Even without training, we found the spam filter performed very well. Kaspersky Antivirus left half of the spam in the inbox, but BitDefender left only 13 percent. This is an excellent result, and the spam filtering had no discernible impact on the time taken to retrieve mail messages.
EScan, K7 TotalSecurity Version 10.0, and some other suites offer a simple parental control module just to be able to include the feature in their specifications. BitDefender's parental control, on the other hand, is quite sophisticated and compares favorably to many standalone applications - this is much improved over last year's version.
BitDefender's implementation of parental controls is tied to Windows accounts. Internet access times can be limited, website categories can be blocked, and specific keywords can be blocked on a per-user basis. Specific applications can also be blocked or time-limited. IM control (working only with Yahoo Messenger or Windows Live Messenger) can be used to limit chat to a predefined set of contacts or block unwanted contacts.
Website filtering works with all browsers, and the application blocker can't be circumvented by moving or renaming the blocked application. Changing the system time can fool the time scheduler. On the plus side, all websites visited by users subject to parental control are logged.
Overall Conclusion: BitDefender includes everything you would expect in a suite. The malware detection is especially good, and the antispam, privacy protection and parental controls are better than those in most suites. It has more of an impact on system performance than some of its rivals, but, all in all, it is an excellent choice for all-round protection.