avast! Internet Security 8

Free antivirus products are fairly common, but most vendors charge for full-scale security suite protection. Avast! is no exception, though at $69.99 per year for three licenses avast! Internet Security 8 is less expensive than some. With this suite, you get the same antivirus and bonus features found in avast!'s standalone antivirus plus firewall protection, spam filtering, and an impressive virtualization system.

The product's main window looks a lot like that of the antivirus, except with a dark background rather than a light one (see the slideshow). Here, too, the old look has been updated for Windows 8, with big, touch-friendly panels and a green and red happy/unhappy overall security status indicator.

Clicking the Market panel opens an in-product store from which you can purchase any product or service that avast! offers. An elaborate support system is also built in, with everything at your fingertips from FAQs to remote assistance.

Decent Antivirus
The antivirus protection in this suite is precisely the same as what's found in avast! Free Antivirus 8. I'll offer a summary here, but for a detailed run-down of my testing, please read that review.

Ransomware kept avast! from installing on one test system, but tech support managed a workaround. Malware on another system actively blocked avast!'s installer and other processes, requiring hours of remote-control diagnosis and repair. Starting this month, I'm rating the user experience of installing and scanning with each product, ranging from five stars when the process goes through without a hitch, down to one star if the product simply won't install or run on one or more of my test systems. Success at the expense of a lengthy remote assistance session earned two stars for avast!

Because I'm using a new malware collection for the first time, I can't make an exact one-to-one score comparison between avast! and other recent products. Tested with my previous collection, Comodo Internet Security Complete 2013, Norton Internet Security (2013), and Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 all scored 6.6 points. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware 1.70 took the top score of 7.1 points.

Avast! detected 75 percent of the malware samples and scored 5.8 of 10 possible points for removal. Its score is just a bit above the average of the previous group, while its detection rate is slightly below that group's average. For an explanation of how I perform malware removal testing, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

In my malware blocking test, avast! likewise earned scores that are good, but not great. Its 86 percent detection rate and 8.5 point score are both just slightly below the average of products tested with my previous malware collection. It did prove unusually effective at blocking downloads from malware-hosting sites.

Webroot detected 100 percent of the previous malware collection and scored a near-perfect 9.9 points. Second place goes to SecureIT Plus (2013), with 97 percent detection and 9.7 points. For details on my malware blocking test, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

Decent Lab Results
All the independent testing labs that I follow include avast!'s technology in their reports. In general avast! does better at static tests, things like on-demand scanning. It did pass the whole-product dynamic test by AV-Comparatives, with a rating of STANDARD. Its scores are good, but not on par with a top product like Bitdefender Internet Security 2013.

The chart below summarizes recent lab results. For details about the labs and their tests, please read How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/Dp9KO_yjIVI/0,2817,2416443,00.asp

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