Avast is quite a household brand name when it comes to Anti Virus. Although not as well known as some of the bigger manufactures such as Kaspersky, Norton and Mcafee, they are growing in popularity and are becoming a well trusted name when it comes to computer security.

Avast offer a free and paid for anti virus solution and both have an impressive set of features to keep your computer safe from viruses and malware. Let’s take a look.

Features – As with most anti virus programs Avast uses real time shields to protect your system. However, unlike many other programs Avast uses a separate shield for each type of protection it offers, they are as follows:

• File System Shield – Protects your system by monitoring file activity and scans all files being read and write for virus signatures.
• Mail Shield – Scans your emails for any potential viruses in the attachments and message bodies.
• Web Shield – Monitors your online activity and scans any web pages you visit to detect any possible exploits.
• P2P Shield – For those who use any p2p clients such as bit torrent, Avast will scan the programs you are downloading and check for viruses.
• IM Shield - Monitors your instant messaging programs and checks for any suspicious activity.
• Network Shield – Acts as a basic firewall to check for any security breaches.
• Behaviour Shield – This works as a heuristics engine to monitor your entire system for any suspicious behaviour.

The list is certainly impressive and Avast pretty much have all angles covered. All the shields are customisable and can be fine tuned to exclude certain file types or change the detection and notification settings.

Avast also uses an auto update to engine to ensure that your definitions are kept up to date at all times. Full system scans can be ran at any time and you can also schedule boot time scans which will scan your system upon start-up, this is a handy feature since a lot of viruses and malware will auto start-up when Windows first loads and a boot scan should intercept them before they can do this.

Effectiveness – The most important feature of any anti virus program is how effective it is against catching and removing viruses. Lot’s of wonderful features are useless unless the Anti Virus vendor can address the main critical issue, which is its detection rate.

Avast scores very high in this department and in the tests that I conducted it was able to detect some very stubborn and well hidden viruses that other anti virus vendors missed out on. The heuristics engine is also very effective especially if you turn the sensitivity up to full, by doing so you are using the maximum level of protection but there might be occasions where it detects false positives (programs that aren’t actually viruses but are detected as them). This is a small price to pay for the extra protection you get.

The other real time shields were also effective and the web shield was able to detect some JavaScript Web exploits that could have potentially infected my system if it had not have been running. Once a threat is found Avast will popup a notification in the bottom right of the screen, by default there will also be an audio notification which is quite distinct, so there is no chance you won’t notice it!

Free Version Vs Paid Version – The free version of Avast is very effective and for those on a budget it is usually quite adequate for general use. The paid version comes in at $39.95 and offers some nice extra features:

• Faster updates.
• Scripting Shield to protect against Windows based scripting viruses.
• Sandbox feature (Allows you to run a potentially infected file or website without causing any damage to your system).
• Better Web shield to protect against web exploits.

Are the extra features worth the price tag? Probably yes, if you do a lot of web surfing and download quite a lot then the improved web shield and scripting shield can make a big difference to prevent infection. The faster updates are also a very good feature to stay ahead of ’0-day’ viruses which have only recently been discovered.

To get maximum Anti Virus protection click here to download and buy the Pro Version of Avast

To download the Avast Free version click here.

When it comes to Anti Virus software there is certainly plenty to choose from, and its pretty safe to say that most anti virus solutions offer the same thing; protection against viruses and malware. Sure, you can get all-in-one security solutions which include firewalls, web filters and spyware protectors, but the anti virus engine is the main core of the program in most cases.

I will have to admit that up until a couple years ago I had never heard of Avira, for me the only Anti Virus manufactures Id heard of were Mcafee, Kaspersky and Symantec (Norton.. eww) but I thought it was time to try something new. I have now been using Avira for over a year now and I am not planning on changing anytime soon!

Features – Avira is nice and straight forward, it offers reliable anti virus protection but also protection against the following; adware, spyware, dialers, double-extension files, phishing, security privacy risks and unusual runtime compression. This list covers most risks that you could be exposed to online and keeps you covered for the more intelligent virus developers who try and bypass anti virus software. Avira has an auto update feature to keep your virus definitions up to date. As well as this you can create your own exceptions list, more about that below. The scanning engine is fast and a full computer scan is performed quite quickly (dependent on how many files you have). Like most Anti Virus software you can set default actions for when it finds a virus and you can set it to auto delete or auto quarantine for example.

Detection Engine – The one thing that has really stood out with Avira is the detection engine, there have been several cases where Avira has detected a malicious file that other anti virus’s wouldnt have done, this means that there have been several times where I potentially could have been infected if I hadnt been using  Avira. A good way to test this is to use a site like virustotal.com, basically you upload a file to their site and it scans it with 32 different anti virus solutions, you can then see which of those detected a virus and which didnt!

When Avira think’s its found a virus or malicious piece of software you are presented with the following dialog:

When this happens you are forced to take action, all other processes are paused until you respond to this (which is a very good security feature) Your choices are straight forward, and for the most part you are going to want to delete the suspect file. The one thing about Avira is that sometimes it can get a bit trigger happy when it comes to detecting files. For example I have several tools I use such as port scanners and password revealers (for when people forget their passwords) and Avira detects them as hack tools. Luckily this is where the exception feature comes in handy and you can prevent Avira from constantly notifying you that the files are malicious.

Appearance – Avira has a very clean and simple interface and that is what I like about it. I have always hated when software companies bloat their software and make the interface too graphically intense (hmm, norton anyone?) but with Avira the interface is smooth and simple, it responds fast and everything is easy to access. Everything you could need to configure is configurable. A log file is kept of important events such as when a virus was found and what action was taken, you can also view reports for these kind of events although this is generally something you dont really need with a home solution.

As you can see the interface is straight forward and the front screen displays the most important information you need to see.

The good thing about Avira is that it will leave you alone and get on with what it has to do, it will only disturb you if its important (i.e its found a virus or it cant update) you can even set default actions as ive mentioned before which will mean you get disturbed even less!

The only bad thing about Avira is the advertisements, at least once a day you will get a popup advertising the paid solution, whilst this is a slight inconvenience I will admit that its worth it for such a robust and reliable anti virus solution. I would go as far as to say that the paid solution could well be worth the money, although im unsure as to what the differences between the free and paid versions are.

Overall Avira is great, im pretty sure its saved my skin many times where other Anti Viruses would have failed me! It runs fast, it doesnt hassle you too much and best of all its free!