VIPRE Antivirus 2013

With its snake logo and slick appearance, VIPRE Antivirus 2013 looks ready to put the bite on any viruses or other malware it might encounter. One license costs $39.99, but for $20 more you can get a "home site license" to add antivirus protection for all the PCs in your household, up to ten. VIPRE focuses on the central tasks of clearing out malware and preventing future infestation; it's better at the latter.

VIPRE's main window keeps you apprised of security status and offers useful statistics like the number of threats it has vanquished and how much longer your subscription runs. You can quickly launch a scan or check for updates. From the Manage tab you can set up scheduled scans, peruse the scan history, and dig into VIPRE's quarantine to examine just what threats it has caught.

Lots of Work for Tech Support
Malware on two of my infested test systems actively prevented VIPRE's installer from connecting with GFI's servers. Without that connection, the product couldn't install. Tech support launched a remote control session to examine the problem, and solved it by supplying an offline installer followed by an offline update. After a full scan, only one of the two systems regained the ability to connect with GFI's servers.

On another system the product just would not install, displaying a cryptic error message. Tech support supplied diagnostic programs, a bootable safe test environment, and a no-install tool called VIPRE Rescue. After hours of remote-control diagnosis and repair the support agent managed to get VIPRE installed.

My contact at GFI confirmed that any user would get this level of support, after escalation. I was impressed by the knowledge and persistence of the support agent. Of course, I would have been even more impressed if the product had simply installed without a need for hands-on remote-control repairs.

Average Malware Cleanup
A VIPRE antivirus scan is relatively speedy. On my standard clean test system it took just under 27 minutes, well below the current average of 39 minutes. "VIPRE Rapid Scan" technology avoids re-scanning files that are known to be safe, so a repeat scan took just one minute.

In a surprising number of cases, VIPRE detected and removed the installer file for a threat without doing anything about the already-installed malware. It detected 74 percent of threats overall, well below the 89 percent detected by Norton AntiVirus (2013) and Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2013) . The free AVG Anti-Virus FREE 2013 detected 87 percent, as did Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2013 .

VIPRE scored 5.8 points for malware removal. Norton has the top score this season, with 6.6 points. Kaspersky, AVG, and Daily Safety Check Home Edition are close behind with 6.5 points.

Rootkit threats hook deeply into Windows and can be especially tough to remove, so I always break out a separate score for the malware samples that use rootkit technology. Norton, Kaspersky, AVG, Bitdefender, and a number of others detected 100 percent of the rootkits in my collection; Kaspersky beat out the rest with 9.4 points for rootkit removal. VIPRE detected just 80 percent, and scored 7.0 points against rootkits. To learn more about how I run the malware removal test, see How We Test Malware Removal.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/RuqSrbNCe_g/0,2817,2410465,00.asp

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