Bitdefender ‘s entry-level antivirus is called Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, and this Plus is completely deserved. Bitdefender Antivirus Review is an article that studies this tool in detail to detail its various features, advantages and disadvantages.
This tool takes care of all the basic antivirus tasks efficiently , and goes way beyond in terms of additional security features . In terms of features, it could go up against many security suites and win. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus remains a top choice when it comes to protecting your PC security.
Some antivirus products, such as Cylance Smart Antivirus and F-Secure, stick strictly to the basics, eliminating existing malware infestations and defending against new attacks. Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews show that, on the other hand, Bitdefender offers a vast collection of security-focused features, including password management, enhanced security for online transactions, ransomware protection, and even a VPN. To make sure you realize everything you’re getting, the installer presents a slideshow detailing the features while it does its job.
At $39.99 per year for a license, Bitdefender’s pricing matches that of many competitors, including Kaspersky, Webroot , Trend Micro, and ESET NOD32 Antivirus . F-Secure charges but you should know that you get three licenses for this price. Three Bitdefender licenses will cost you $59.99 per year. You can also get five licenses for $69.99, or 10 for $79.99. McAfee costs $59.99 per year, the same price as all three Bitdefender licenses, but with McAfee you can protect every Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household.
This would be the 2021 version of the Bitdefender product line . However, for some time the company has been continually refining each product’s feature set rather than holding back new features for one big release. The latest products no longer have the year as the version number.
The main Bitdefender window displays a security dashboard, with a menu on the left that provides detailed access to features. Security recommendations occupy the top of the rest of the window, with a collection of what the product calls Quick Actions below. According to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews, the default quick actions allow you to run a quick scan, system scan or vulnerability scan, open the VPN and configure Safepay online protection. You can configure the product to place the File Shredder or Wallet Password Manager in the main view, instead of an action that is not your preferred.
Clicking Protection, Privacy, or Utilities in the left menu takes you to detailed pages of features and settings, although some features are only available at the suite level. For example, on the Protection page, the Firewall and Antispam items require an upgrade. Under Privacy, parental advisor and camera and microphone protection are not available. Under Utilities you can use the file shredder or configure the profile system, but that’s it.
For a year, Bitdefender’s Autopilot mode quietly handled security issues without requiring user intervention. Currently, Autopilot mode plays a more active role. The goal is to ensure that you take full advantage of the many, many features of this product. The Autopilot feature may also suggest you explore the Wallet password manager or check the privacy of your online accounts and this is according to bitdefender antivirus reviews one of its advantages.
Bitdefender Antivirus Interface – Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews
Impressive Online Protection
To be able to examine a tool, we need to use it to give a more concrete explanation in relation to its usage experience. Our malware protection test begins when we open the folder containing an eclectic collection of malware samples whose behavior we have analyzed. At this point, Bitdefender displays a notification saying: “Disinfection in progress… please wait until it is finished”.
The wait was long, over 10 minutes. When the antivirus finished, it offered a link to view what it had accomplished. The real-time access protection system eliminated 83% of samples on sight. We continued the test by launching the samples that had survived this first elimination.
Bitdefender detected most of the remaining samples at or shortly after launch, but in several cases it was unable to prevent the installer from placing executable files on the test system. Bitdefender detected 89% of the samples and scored 8.6 points out of a possible 10, which isn’t great.
Tested with this same set of samples, Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus achieved 100% detection and achieved a perfect score of 10 points. G Data is not far away, with 9.8 points. Which is similar to the Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews which attest that Bitdefender has good performance but compared to others it is less efficient.
As malware collection and analysis takes a long time, we use the same set of samples for several months. To check how an antivirus handles the latest attacks, we use a malware hosting URL feed provided by MRG-Effitas . Typically, these URLs are no more than a day or two old. We run them one after the other, discarding URLs that have already disappeared, and note whether the antivirus diverts the browser from the dangerous URL, eliminates the malicious download, or sits idly by, doing nothing.
Bitdefender’s online threat protection did an excellent job, blocking access to 89% of malware-hosting URLs. The classic antivirus component removed another 10% during the download phase, for a total of 99% protection, like Trend Micro and G Data. McAfee, Sophos and Vipre Antivirus Plus got an extra point for 100% protection.
Phenomenal protection against phishing
Malware attacks your computer, or your data, to make money for its creators, but it’s difficult to write malicious code that can pass through modern antivirus tools. Phishing attacks directly target the most vulnerable element: you, the user and this is according to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews the weakest element and is usually the source of entry for malware – no coding is necessary ; they just need to create compelling copy of a banking site or other sensitive page. Once you log in to the fake page, the scammers have your account. These fraudulent sites are quickly blacklisted and taken down. But phishers just have to create new ones.
Any competent coder could implement a protection system that keeps browsers away from sites on a phishing blacklist, but that alone is not enough. A very good phishing protection system scans pages for signs of fraud, and even blocks those that are too new to be blacklisted. Some products, like Norton, distinguish between blacklisted sites and those identified by scanning. Bitdefender’s Online Threat Protection doesn’t make this distinction and was extremely effective in our testing.
We prepare for this test by scouring phishing analysis sites for the latest reported frauds, making sure to get a good number of frauds that are too recent for the blacklist. We launch each of them in four browsers. The product tested protects one, of course, while the other three rely on the protection built into Chrome, Edge and Firefox. If one or more browsers fail to load a page, we reject it. If the page is not clearly trying to steal login credentials, we will also reject it. When we have enough data points, we do the calculations.
Bitdefender detected almost all fraudulent pages, with a detection rate of 99%, such as McAfee AntiVirus Plus and Norton. Kaspersky and Trend Micro did even better, managing to detect and block 100% of fraud.
Network Threat Prevention
Bitdefender’s Network Threat Protection component works in parallel with Online Threat Protection to detect and repel attacks on security vulnerabilities in the operating system and common applications. This type of protection is most often associated with a firewall, but a few antivirus products like Bitdefender and Norton include it.
To see this feature in action, we bombarded the test system with around 30 exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool . This collection includes exploits targeting Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and several Adobe products, among others. Bitdefender flagged 45% of pages hosting these attacks as dangerous, and its antivirus component caught another 29% by identifying the malware payload. Its total score of 74% is very good.
Some products report exploits using their official CVE name. Bitdefender didn’t do this in its warnings, but when I checked the logs I found lots of details. Of the exploits it detected, Bitdefender identified 60% by name.
Norton AntiVirus Plus is generally the clear winner in this test, detecting over 80% of viruses and identifying the majority of them by name. Exploit protection isn’t an essential antivirus component, especially if you keep your operating system and applications up to date, but according to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews, it’s a nice bonus.
Additional Browser Protection
In addition to the highly visible protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites, Bitdefender also includes an Anti-Tracker component. Anti-Tracker installs as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer. Make sure it is installed in all three.
When you visit a site that contains advertising trackers, site analytics trackers, or other trackers, Bitdefender displays the number of trackers on the extension’s toolbar icon. By default, its active Do Not Track system blocks them all. You can click for a summary by category, which includes an estimate of page load time saved. And you can disable blocking of specific categories. You’ll find similar Do Not Track functionality in various security tools, including Abine Blur Premium and Kaspersky Internet Security.
Also Read: Norton Antivirus Review 2023 | Everything You Need to Know
Improved Ransomware Protection
No antivirus is perfect. They will all occasionally miss a brand new attack. Of course, within a few days, most security companies release an update that eliminates the new threat, but once the ransomware destroys your files, it is of no use. Bitdefender has always been at the forefront of ransomware protection , and the latest edition further improves this technology and which according to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews is an advantage for the software.
The Advanced Threat Defense feature complements ordinary antivirus scanning with behavior-based detection, including ransomware behavior detection. Network threat prevention blocks the exploitation pathways that some ransomware attacks rely on.
At the first sign of a possible ransomware attack, Ransomware Remediation backs up important files and restores them after Bitdefender neutralizes the attack.
Ransomware must necessarily modify your important files, replacing them with encrypted versions. A simple defense is to prohibit modification of files in protected locations unless the program doing the modification is authorized. This is how Bitdefender’s Safe Files feature worked. When it detected a new program, whether it was a new image editor you installed or a pernicious ransomware attacker, Safe Files would ask you if you should trust it.
Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews attest that there are some problems with this technique. First, it adds a speed bump every time you edit files with a new valid program. Second, and more importantly, it relies on the user to decide whether a file is trustworthy. Maybe you weren’t paying attention. Maybe your finger slipped and you clicked Allow by accident. You might accidentally trigger an attack. The latest edition of Bitdefender has removed Safe Files, and instead relies on its improved Ransomware Remediation feature which is according to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews much more reliable because it does not require users to decide.
Testing this layer of protection was not easy. Bitdefender Shield real-time protection components eliminated all of our ransomware samples on sight. To get a glimpse of the other layers of protection, we had to disable real-time protection. In fact, we could not copy the samples back to the test system without disabling network protection and web protection. However, we made sure to leave the Advanced Threat Defense and Ransomware Remediation functions active.
Almost all of our samples are file-encrypting ransomware, although we have a screen locator and a whole disk encrypter. One of the file encryptors escaped by refraining from any activity, perhaps frightened by the presence of Bitdefender. Advanced Threat Defense took care of all the others except one, including the screen locker. The pernicious Petya ransomware evaded the behavior-based detection system and encrypted the virtual disk, rendering the virtual test system unusable. Keep in mind, however, that we had to disable many layers of real-time protection to perform this test.
We have encountered ransomware protection systems that do not trigger early enough on startup and therefore may miss loaded ransomware at startup. To check Bitdefender’s protection, we copied several samples that triggered protection to the Startup folder and rebooted. Bitdefender has eliminated them all and Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews confirm that it is very secure against ransomware.
We also tried running KnowBe4’s RanSim ransomware simulator . Advanced Threat Detection has eliminated essential components of the simulator, making it impossible to obtain any detailed reporting, which is a good result.
Ransomware-specific protection components are appearing in more and more antivirus products, but most don’t go as far as Bitdefender. Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security is one of the few that offers a multi-layered approach. It blocks unauthorized changes to protected files, detects ransomware behaviour, and restores all files that were encrypted before behaviour-based detection was triggered. Webroot uses behaviour-based detection, and its logging and rollback system for managing the behaviour of unknown files can even reverse the effects of ransomware.
A Wallet For Your Passwords
Password management is a feature more often found in security suites than in standalone antivirus products although Avast products, even Avast Free Antivirus , include password management. Bitdefender’s Wallet feature stores passwords, personal information, and credit card details for use on websites. It also saves passwords for apps and Wi-Fi networks.
Wallet has changed very little in the latest versions. It requires a strong master password , separate from your Bitdefender Central password. It allows the creation of multiple wallets or password databases and gives you the choice between syncing between devices and keeping passwords local only. Finally, it automatically captures login credentials as you type them and replays them if necessary.
In testing, it handled standard password entry forms but couldn’t handle some two-page login systems. Wallet doesn’t store as much personal data for web forms as some dedicated password managers, but it correctly fills in all the fields it stores.
When creating a new account, you can use Wallet’s password generator , which creates 15-character passwords consisting of letters and numbers by default.
Wallet completely handles the basics of password management but doesn’t go much further. Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews share that if you want premium features like automatic password change, two-factor authentication, secure credential sharing, or password inheritance management, you should consider a standalone password management utility.
Bitdefender VPN
Bitdefender’s multiple layers of antivirus, web, and network protection keep your devices and their data safe. However, when you connect to the Internet, your data in transit may be at risk. To ensure the privacy of your data, you need a VPN (virtual private network) . When you connect using a VPN, no one, not even the owner of the shady Wi-Fi network you’re using, can access your network traffic, and it will be harder to track you as you move around. the web which is one of Bitdefender’s features and according to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews one of its strong points.
Bitdefender VPN I Bitdefender Antivirus Review
Price for Premium
Bitdefender VPN is not available as a standalone product. Even the feature-rich Premium VPN requires that you already use a Bitdefender antivirus or security suite. This VPN is a rebranded version of the Hotspot Shield VPN service . Bitdefender uses Hotspot Shield servers and services, but your information is secured by Bitdefender. Hotspot Shield cannot see your online activities and only receives a Bitdefender ID.
Upon installation, you get a seven-day trial period of the Premium service. After that, it goes into limited free mode, unless you pay for a Premium subscription. The free version of Bitdefender VPN limits your usage to 200 MB per day. Bitdefenderest Antivirus Reviews confirm that this is more generous than the free version of TunnelBear VPN , which only offers 500 MB per month . The free version also limits which VPN servers you can access. At the other extreme, the free version of ProtonVPN has no data limits.
If you decide to upgrade to the Premium edition of Bitdefender VPN, you will have access to all available VPN servers, with no data limits. An annual subscription costs $39.99 per year, or you can pay $6.99 per month. That’s a remarkably low monthly cost, comparable to the very affordable Mullvad VPN , which costs €5 or $5.87 per month. It’s also significantly cheaper than Hotspot Shield itself, which costs $12.99 per month.
The average price per month for a VPN service is around $10.14. Bitdefender is a little more than half the price of NordVPN and only a dollar or two more than Mullvad. A typical standalone VPN allows use on a specific number of devices, most often five. Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews show that with Bitdefender you can use as many devices as you have licenses for the underlying antivirus or suite. The price of Premium VPN does not change.
Simple User Interface
The Bitdefender VPN is very simple: a thin gray rectangle with a big blue button to connect the VPN. You change the VPN server from the drop-down menu, although you can only select the country you will connect to. Other services, like NordVPN , allow you to select the specific server in a given country, and even tell you what type of load that server is experiencing. Bitdefender is more of a set-it-and-forget-it type. That said, it only has a few options. You can turn notifications on or off, configure the VPN to automatically connect to unsecured Wi-Fi networks, and have it start when Windows starts. There is also a Kill Switch option that cuts off unsecured internet connectivity if the VPN connection drops.
The stripped-down nature of Bitdefender VPN Premium is understandable when you consider that it is sold as a complement to Bitdefender antivirus products. In fact, you can’t use Bitdefender VPN Premium as a standalone product – it must be installed alongside a Bitdefender antivirus or suite.
Other VPN services, like TorGuard VPN , offer a host of additional options, like a dedicated IP address and access to a 10 GB network. NordVPN and ProtonVPN allow you to connect to the Tor anonymization network through their clients. Several VPN services also offer servers designed for specific activities, like P2P file sharing. Bitdefender VPN doesn’t have special servers for P2P, but you can configure it to trigger automatically when a P2P application is active.
None of the documentation we found for the Bitdefender VPN specifies the number of servers available, but we were told it was the same as that available with the Hotspot Shield client. Hotspot Shield has 1,800 servers in around 80 countries. This is a good performance, and beats most of the small fry of VPNs.
Server location is important, partly because more locations means more options for your own location, but mainly because a closer server generally provides better speed and lower latency.
You won’t find an option to change the protocol the Bitdefender VPN client uses to create its encrypted tunnel. This is because Bitdefender still uses Hotspot Shield’s Catapult Hydra protocol. Several Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews prefer OpenVPN, which has the advantage of being open-source and not having potential vulnerabilities, but Catapult Hydra is allegedly faster. WireGuard is a new VPN technology and the successor to OpenVPN in the free software field.
Medium Impact On Connection Speeds
One of the biggest concerns with using a VPN is its impact on the speed of your internet connection. Using the Ookla speed test tool , we find a percentage change between the speed test results with the VPN and without the VPN.
Hotspot Shield performed extremely well in our speed tests. It slowed download speeds the least of all recent products, and also increased latency the least. Surfshark VPN beat all competitors with its almost non-existent effect on download speed, but Hotspot Shield’s effect on downloads is well below the median.
It is important to remember that variations in network traffic can affect speed test results. The fastest VPN today may not be the fastest tomorrow; The fastest VPN in New York may not be the fastest in Portland. These comparisons can give an idea of which VPN will put the least friction on your connection, but Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews does not recommend choosing a VPN on speed alone.
If you already pay for Bitdefender and are looking for a no-frills VPN service at a bargain price, Bitdefender VPN Premium fits the bill. If you’re looking for more features, like Tor-over-VPN, multi-hop connections, etc., the majority of Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews recommend you look at ProtonVPN . Mullvad is slightly cheaper, and TunnelBear VPN is significantly more user-friendly.
You can also consider Norton 360 Deluxe if you want powerful security that includes VPN protection. . However, with Norton, you get a full-featured VPN at no extra cost.
Safepay For Online Security
Online security is important even when you’re just watching the news or posting pictures of pets, but it’s critical when you log into a financial site. Bitdefender’s Safepay automatically offers protection when it detects that you are about to connect to a banking or other sensitive site. You can ask them to always use Safepay on the site in question, or to never use it for this site.
The Safepay browser runs in a separate desktop and supports Wallet, naturally, and you can install Flash if necessary, but other extensions are not welcome. Kaspersky Bank Mode works in much the same way, although it doesn’t open a separate desktop.
Safepay browser process isolation should protect against any keylogger software or other keystroke-stealing spyware . Additionally, a virtual keyboard helps defeat even hardware keyloggers. It also prevents programs from taking screenshots to capture sensitive information. You can configure Bitdefender to enable VPN whenever SafePay is used, for added protection.
We tested Safepay by trying to connect to a dozen financial sites, some large, some small. Most of them were directed to the protective shield of SafePay. However, it did not offer SafePay for payment sites such as PayPal, VenMo and Zelle. Of course, you are free to open the SafePay browser and navigate to the site you want to secure. And if you no longer want to automatically open a domain in SafePay, you can simply open the settings and delete it.
Even More Features
According to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews, the list of features of this antivirus does not end there. The Vulnerability Scan feature runs automatically in the background and alerts you of missing Windows security updates, missing security patches for popular apps, and weak security issues. Windows account passwords. Wi-Fi Security Advisor alerts you of any security issues with your home, office, or public Wi-Fi hotspots, and advises you to use VPN if necessary.
A great way to protect your most sensitive documents is to encrypt them . After encryption, it is essential to securely delete the unsecured original, to avoid recovery. Bitdefender reserves file encryption technology for its security suite products, but File Shredder secure removal is present even in antivirus. Use it when you really need to eliminate a sensitive file so that no one can recover it.
Sometimes you encounter malware that is so aggressive and persistent that even Bitdefender cannot remove it. The typical solution in a case like this is to burn a bootable rescue disk, which runs a non-Windows operating system. Bitdefender does better with its Rescue Environment. There is no need to burn a disc; just select Rescue Environment and reboot. Windows malware cannot defend itself when Windows is not running.
Bitdefender has long included configuration profiles for different types of activity. For example, the Work profile strengthens email protection and system performance, while the Cinema profile suppresses notifications and limits background activity. The current edition highlights this feature, reminding that its activation can optimize your experience and according to Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews it is one of the advantages of Bitdefender.
Bitdefender Antivirus Review: The Conclusions
To better inform and educate you about Bitdefender, NAP has implemented several tests to highlight the software’s features and its strong and weak points.
In conclusion, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus offers excellent protection against malware. Our own tests show that it is particularly effective against web threats, including malware hosting sites and phishing pages. For added defense against ransomware, it monitors for ransomware-like behavior and restores all encrypted files before behavior-based detection kicks in. Additionally, it offers enough features to be considered a suite of security. Bitdefender Antivirus Reviews confirm that Bitdefender consumer reviews find it to be a truly excellent choice.
Bitdefender offers several other services and for these the opinions are also divided, we find many different points of view such as Bitdefender Box opinions and Bitdefender lifetime opinions.