Avast Business Antivirus Review

Security products that refer to themselves as “antivirus” usually have basic essential functions, but Avast Business Antivirus is a rare exception, with almost the same functionality as many sets to ensure complete security.

For example, there is a basic antivirus, behavior monitoring and file scanning, email and real-time scanning. You also get an intelligent firewall, a spam filter and a smart blocking of malicious URLs. Not to mention that the Wi-Fi Inspector is looking for vulnerabilities in the network, a sandbox that runs questionable applications in an isolated environment, protecting the rest of your PC and a bootable rescue environment that helps remove even the most stubborn and hidden threats.

Price

The price is reasonable for 21.43 pounds sterling (the US $ 27.86) per year for one computer (Windows, Windows Server or Mac) with discounts for adding users and extending the subscription period.

For example, a license for ten users, a three-year permit costs £ 337.60 ($ 439), or £ 11.25 ($ 14.63) per computer per year. A large business can span 200 devices over three years for £ 4,049.60 ($ 3,115), or £ 6.75 ($ 8.78) per computer per year. You can get basic coverage for less, and more great products, such as Kaspersky Endpoint Security, can cost significantly more, but Avast Business Antivirus is quite expensive for what you get.

If you need more power, Avast Business Antivirus Pro expands the package with automatic updates of generic software, a protected data shredder, etc. Prices start at £ 26.79 ($ 34.83) per PC per year.

Avast Premier review includes browser cleaning tools, webcam protection, a password manager and an Avast SecureLine VPN subscription, which costs $ 32.15 ($ 41.80).

If you use a VPN, it is very profitable. For example, the Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus license for ten devices for two years is, for instance, £ 434.10 ($ 564). Private Internet access is one of the cheapest VPN providers, but it still charges $ 69.95 (£ 53.80) per user, two-year license.

Regardless of what you buy, all packages can be installed and monitored from a separate endpoint or controlled remotely from a cloud console – this is your call.

Settings

Avast Business Antivirus is available as a 30-day trial version, which you can download immediately. Avast does not require your company name, location or phone number – just your name and email address.

Setup can be straightforward. Download, run and work with the wizard, accepting all the defaults, and it ends in less than a minute.

However, click the “Customize” button, and this is an entirely different story. Avast gives you complete control over which features to install and which should be left, very convenient for business users who work with the package along with other security tools.

Compatibility is also crucial when the package is still installed on anything with Windows XP SP3, Windows Server 2008 R2, or macOS 10.9 and later.

Install everything, and a package can capture about 1 GB of disk space. This is cumbersome than some of the competitors, but this is not enough for most users. It is also not too many system resources. Avast uses four background processes, but they usually capture only about 90-100 MB of RAM between them.

Viewing Avast files showed that the package includes elements from Chromium, OpenVPN, OpenSSL, and others. All of its data, folders, and processes seem to be protected appropriately, and we could not disable or disrupt the program with our simple test attacks.

Specifications

Avast Business Antivirus uses the same familiar interface as Avast’s home product. The opening screen displays the current security status and allows you to launch a multipurpose intelligent scan by pressing a button, and buttons on the left side panel open panels where you can access other functions and functions.

Click the start button Smart Scan, and Avast launches a quick scan of the antivirus and looks for vulnerabilities in the network. This detected and removed our test malware, then listed all devices connected to our system, and even detected an unnecessary open port on our router, and only about 45 seconds is impressive.

If you have a small or stable network, you may not want Avast to scan your system every time it runs an antivirus scan. Configuring Smart Scan to remove network auditing helps improve scanning speed, and you can manually launch a network scan whenever you want.

Opening the Scan panel gives you additional options for running a full system scan, checking specific files or folders, or scheduling download time scans. You can also block files, folders, and drives directly from the explorer context menu.

One of the highlights here is the ability to create highly customizable custom scans. If you need something that will only perform a deep scan of Office documents in specific folders, for example, you can create and save it in just a few seconds. It is then displayed on the “Other scans” page, allowing you to run it whenever you want, or you can schedule an automatic scan, even if you are not around.

A separate function Rescue Disk creates a bootable environment for cleaning heavily infected systems. Avast can burn it directly to a USB key or save it as an ISO image for burning to CDs or DVDs or for use with your preferred tools.

Network functions continue to work with Real Site (formerly known as Secure DNS), a convenient option that configures your system to use Avast secure encrypted DNS. This is designed to protect you from DNS hijacking when an attacker can redirect traffic to a malicious site that looks just like the original. But as a bonus, it also prevents Snoopers from using DNS traffic to track your browser actions.

Finally, Wi-Fi Inspector quickly scans your network, listing the associated hardware, their IP addresses, and device type. This can be useful for everyone on their own, as a way to detect unauthorized devices using your network. The module then identifies security holes, such as weak passwords or routers, accessible from the Internet, and provides little help in resolving these problems.

Protection

AV-Comparatives “Real-World Protection Test” assesses the performance of the 18 best antivirus kernels against the latest threats. The August 2018 report put Avast at a disappointing 12th place with a protection level of 99.5%. If you think this sounds reasonable, keep in mind that the first nine packets are protected against 100% of the threats.

Individual results can be misleading, so we also checked the combined reports for February-June 2018, a summary of five separate tests. Avast averaged a slightly lower degree of protection of 99.4%, but still ranked 9th, and the package was far behind some other big names (Symantec took 7th place with 99.5%, McAfee 6th – 99, 6%, Avira 5th – 99.7%.)

Independent laboratory tests are sincere and very long-term, and we cannot begin to compare their level of detail in a single review. But we also wanted to learn a little more about the package with a bit of our own experience.

Final Verdict

It is a universal endpoint protection tool with customizable antivirus, intelligent firewall, intelligent network scanning, and some high-quality features. Laboratory test results are not as good as we would like, but it is still a reliable package that deserves a place on your list.

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