After checking AV solutions outthere for a while I have managed to select four of what I think the best solutions right now:
avast! pro
Kaspersky Internet Security
NOD32
BitDefender Internet Security
I left out, without doubt:
Norton
McAfee
Trend-Micro
AVG
Sophos
AntiVir
and so on…
I have had a really bad time in selecting with which of them finally stick because all of them seems a really good choice, but I’m thinking seriously to make avast! my preferred solution. I needed to check this twice because some of the AV solutions offers too a ‘suite’ version what I find very convenient but HELL, avast! feels beautifully handcrafted.
My two questions before buying avast! pro are:
Why avast! checks out only port 80 when http-scanning? Kaspersky checks a lot more and NOD32 checks at least 2 o 3 more HTTP ports than avast!.
While configuring avast! I found the option to add more ports to scanning but… why those ports aren’t scanned by default? Do I need to add them manually? Why, if those ports ar not too important, KAV & KIS and NOD32 add to the scan path?
I’m tired about firewall, antispywares, AVs and so on, I’m planning to use default WinXPro sp2 ICF plus cFosSpeed 3 internal firewall on, what do you think?
Regards =)
BTW: I’ve read forum policies carefully and dind’t have any line relating to post competitors brands, please excuse me if I’m wrong and please drop a line and I’ll do my best to take this post out.
avast WebShield will scan the HTTP traffic (default at port 80). You can add other ports but only the ones you know are just for HTTP traffic and not for other kind of protocols (like smtp or udp, etc.). All other files will be scanned by Standard Shield.
By WebShield, all data is first checked and then passed to the browser, and if the data is cached it can be also checked by Standard Shield.
So there is much smaller chance of getting infected by some exploit if the data is scanned before it actually hits the browser itself. In other words, the idea of the WebShield is to scan the http stream, to detect any possible virus infection before it has time to get established on the local disk.
In any case, adding 443 to the list of monitored ports will NOT add any extra security (and HTTPS traffic will not be scanned for viruses)
I’m not a friend of suites… I’d love layered defense 8)
I’d rather use a full firewall. I would love if only antivirus+antispyware+antitrojan could be at the same application.
If the applications using these ports use the HTTP protocol, then I believe they should be fine, however, if they don’t then it could cause long delays (or even a timeout style error) as web shield tries to check for HTTP format/content.
There isn’t ‘generally’ any conflict between zero-day exploit protection and avast.
My personal opinion: zero-day protection like PrevX, ProcessGuard (in some way) and this one, SocketShield, promisse more than then in fact do.
You can use WinPatrol for free + avast + firewall and have a good protection level 8)
