Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014)

Pros Advanced disinfection at install handles active malware. Excellent ratings from independent labs. Very good score in hands-on malware removal test. Accurate phishing protection. Useful bonus tools.

Cons Some difficulty installing on malware-infested systems. Good-not-great results in hands-on malware blocking test. Bottom Line The independent testing labs give top marks to Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014). It didn't fare quite as well in my own hands-on tests, but it's definitely a good choice.

By Neil J. Rubenking

It's not even September yet, and I've already encountered one antivirus with "2014" in its name and another with an implied 2014. Kaspersky doesn't use year or version numbers anymore; I'll call their latest product Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014) to distinguish it from last year's version. In addition to effective antivirus protection, it offers a number of useful bonus features.

G Data AntiVirus 2014 is the product that's declared itself ready for the new year. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014) doesn't actually use a year number, but it's the latest version. Symantec has also eliminated version and year numbers; their new product line will show up in early September.

Installation Challenges
Kaspersky installed without incident on eight of my twelve malware-infested test systems. On seven of those systems, it reported active malware immediately after installation and asked permission to perform an advanced disinfection, followed by a reboot. In a couple of cases it requested another advanced disinfection afterward. This made for a lengthy installation process, but on several systems a later full scan found nothing, meaning that the initial disinfection did the entire cleanup job.

The WindowsUnlocker component of Kaspersky's Rescue Disc foiled a ransomware threat that initially prevented installing the antivirus. On another system, the installer totally failed. On advice from tech support I employed a number of specialized tools and ran the Rescue Disc. Advice from tech support fixed collateral damage caused by the Rescue Disc; eventually I managed a full scan.

Kaspersky installed fine on one system but every time it launched, the process was immediately terminated by malware. Solving this required a number of tools, including a custom script supplied by tech support, but eventually I got the product installed and working.

I did run into some issues getting Kaspersky installed, granted, but all of the problems were solved by the Rescue Disc and other ancillary Kaspersky tools. On that basis, Kaspersky gets four stars for installation experience.

Good Malware Cleanup
Once I completed all of the installations I ran a full scan on each system and tallied up the results. I was a little apprehensive, because I had tested Kaspersky PURE 3.0 Total Security using the same malware collection a few months ago. I wondered if information gathered during that earlier test would give the antivirus an unfair advantage.

I needn't have worried. The antivirus handled almost 90 percent of the malware samples exactly the same way the suite had, right down to the percentage of non-executable traces remaining. For those where the two products produced different results, sometimes one was better, sometimes the other. Why any difference? Most likely it's because I applied different ancillary cleanup tools in the process of getting the two products installed.

Kaspersky detected 81 percent of the samples, the same as Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (2014) and better than the 78 percent detected by Kaspersky PURE. It scored 6.1 points for malware removal, a fraction above Kaspersky PURE and a fraction below Bitdefender Free.

Best among products tested with this same malware collection was Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, with 83 percent detection and 6.6 points. The unusual cleanup-only Jumpshot tool detected more, 86 percent of the samples, but scored just 6.5 points.

For a full explanation of how I run this test see How We Test Malware Removal.

Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2014) malware removal chart

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Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014)

Pros Very good scores in PCMag's antivirus tests. Great scores in independent lab tests. Excellent phishing protection. Prevents transmission of private data. ID theft monitoring. New Wallet manages passwords, private data. Safepay hardened browser protects financial transactions. Scans Facebook profile, scans system for vulnerabilities. New Security Report summarizes each week's events.

Cons Some difficulty installing on malware-infested systems. Wallet password management limited. Wallet can't fill Web forms. Bottom Line Core antivirus protection in Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014) gets good scores in my tests and great scores from the independent labs. The "Plus" in the name refers to an impressive collection of effective, relevant, security tools. It's a great choice.

By Neil J. Rubenking

If you give away your antivirus protection for free, how will you convince people to pony up for the paid edition? Well, one way is to make it do more than the free edition does, preferably much, much more. That's the approach taken by Bitdefender Antivirus Plus (2014). For $39.95 each year you get antivirus protection that's more advanced than the free edition plus enough additional, relevant, effective security features to make your head spin.

Bitdefender's latest premium antivirus incorporates a new technology that the company calls Photon. According to the Bitdefender website, Photon is "an innovative technology that visibly improves speed and performance in a matter of hours by gradually molding to your PC." In testing, it proved better at malware cleanup than Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition (2014), which doesn't include Photon technology, but not vastly better.

This edition looks much the same as the previous. Its main window displays a green, yellow, or red banner reflecting current security status, and six big panels offer access to six major security components. You can arrange these panels so that your four favorites appear at startup. In its default Autopilot mode, Bitdefender doesn't pester you with popups. If something happens that might need your attention, it notes the event on the Events page and displays the current number of unread event items, which you can review at your own convenience.

A handy desktop Widget gives you a quick view of security status, antivirus activity, the number of unread notification events, and more. You can use it for quick access to the full event list, or to the online My Bitdefender portal. Still using XP? Don't worry; the Widget works with all Windows versions from XP to 8.

Some Installation Difficulty
Documentation for Photon includes the statement, "Now, more than ever, installing Bitdefender on your machine will avoid slowdowns and freezes, and will imply a seamless and secure experience." That's probably true, once you get it installed. However, installing the product on eight of my twelve malware-infested test systems took some extra work.

As with Bitdefender Free, a scan using the Bitdefender Rescue CD handled one test system taken over by ransomware, another infested with malware that actively fought back against the Bitdefender installer, and a third system that repeatedly crashed during installation. The Rescue CD proved effective, though its malware cleanup can be extremely slow.

Bitdefender's preinstall scan damaged critical files on one test system, making it unbootable. It turns out the Rescue CD is a full-scale operating system environment with a file manager, browser, and Linux console. I used it to gather logs for tech support, and to run fix-up scripts they supplied after analyzing the logs. It took a while, but we got this one working again.

A product that installs with little or no difficulty gets five stars for ease of installation. If the problem can be solved using a rescue CD or other ancillary tool, that's still good, so it's worth four stars. Bitdefender gets three stars for ease of installation; I managed to get it working, but it took a good bit of back-and-forth with tech support. Bitdefender Free required even more of my time working with tech support, enough more that it rated just two stars in this area.

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