Description

 BitDefender 2011 product line has just launched,
and the developer announces hefty improvements to
the modules that maintained your PC secure in the
previous edition, as well as new features to
increase protection and turn handling the
applications into less of a challenge for all
types of users.
Antivirus

This module
brings a new layer of security, besides the now
standard protection against all sorts of malware
(signature based detection and heuristics) and
elimination of phishing attacks (antiphishing
toolbar still gets installed automatically in
Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox). Search
Advisor has been introduced in this edition of the
suite as a means to counterattack infections via
shady websites.


Starting with this
version BitDefender Total Security can scan your
search results in Yahoo!, Bing and Google and mark
those with compromised security integrity. Search
Advisor is based on the same technology used by
antiphing and anti-fraud engines and is designed
to check if the links returned by the search
engine are safe or not.

To ensure maximum
efficiency the results are verified against a
database of signatures but the code is also
analyzed. However, this may affect your browsing
speed, as during our tests we noticed that the
safety marks would load progressively, with the
first result being verified in about two
seconds.

The benefits of cloud antivirus
are no secret. Besides taking the load off the
user’s station there is also the advantage of
faster scan results. In BitDefender products it is
called QuickScan and it does contribute to turning
down a notch the impact on system resources and
the time required for a full of system scan to
complete.

				


Testing the
efficiency of the improved malware protection,
showed that the standard has not been lowered in
this version. We put the engine against a database
of 300 of the worst threats we could find back in
July and the results were pretty good as only 11
items managed to evade its vigilance.


However, we continued with a fresher
database encompassing some of the worst threats we
collected through August and the results were
again good. Out of the 38 malicious elements 30 of
them got nabbed by the engine, leaving 8 threats
behind.

Parental Control

The same
options are available in this module as in the
previous version. However now you have the
possibility to view and configure your kid’s
activity remotely, from any web access point
through an online parental control management
console. You need to log into your BitDefender
account and you have instant access to alerts,
recent activity and a settings area.

It
offers the same flexibility you are accustomed to
in the program, from blocking websites and
applications to defining Internet access
schedules. Statistics with most accessed web
pages, as well as most used applications and
contacts in instant messaging programs (Yahoo!
Messenger and Windows Live Messenger) are
available. The effects of the settings in this
online console, however, are not instant. It takes
a while for the information to be sent to the
suite installed on your machine and enforce the
restrictions.

				


System
Tune-Up

This time around, the PC
performance improving module in Total Security
offers a new instrument to maintain the system at
its best behavior. “Monitor” section in the
menu provides ample statistics about each
application currently running on your computer and
calculates its average CPU and RAM usage and
labels its resource usage as Low, Medium or
High.

Based on this information you can
easily decide which of the apps is causing
performance drag on the system and choose to close
it. More than this, Total Security makes available
a 30-minute CPU and RAM usage history for each of
the elements displayed.

An improvement
added to the module is the fact that during the PC
Clean-Up process you now have the advantage of
selecting the elements that should be cleaned.
This basically translates into the possibility of
choosing if you want IE or Firefox cache to be
purged or if the list of recent and temporary
documents should be cleaned up.

Home
Network

As the number of computers in a
household keeps increasing, the need for a console
to manage the security of all stations also keeps
growing. With BitDefender Total Security you have
the possibility to administer BitDefender products
installed on different stations inside the
network.

The list of activities you can
engage in remotely comprises of registering the
product, running on-demand scan (full scan, deep
scan or verifying My Documents folder), initiate a
fix-all-issues routine, begin the update process,
set a specific parental control profile or run a
tune-up task. As soon as you add the computer to
BitDefender Home Network and all the passwords
verify you are good to
go.

				


BitDefender Total
Security 2011 is not exactly a suite for the
weak-hearted if you choose Expert View. But it can
adjust its interface to the level of computer
knowledge of the user. Its learning curve is not
at all difficult, especially with the introduction
of the new support feature which sports flash
videos thoroughly explaining the steps as plainly
as possible.

The list of tutorials covers
subjects from creating a BitDefender account to
more complicated stuff like removing infected
files from System Volume Information folder or
adding exclusions in the Active Virus Control
module. Internet connection is required to view
the clips.

Apart from the improvements and
the new features available in this edition, the
suite maintains the high standards of the previous
version. Thus the firewall will not leave you
uncovered and data coming in or going out will
still be filtered; Vulnerability module will still
keep an eye wide open for the system to have the
latest updates installed and applications on the
system to be in their latest version. Also,
privacy control is on guard against identity
theft, Trojans trying to fit in Windows Registry,
tracking cookies or scripts from gaining access to
your data.

As good as all this sounds, we
had our share of trouble tinkering with
BitDefender Total Security and we could not test
the Antispam module. We tried it in Outlook 2010
and Mozilla Thunderbird (both the portable and the
desktop versions) but the result was the same: no
email was filtered. The trouble may be on our end,
but we also contacted BitDefender for instructions
to make it work. They assured us that the issue
will be investigated and come back with an
answer.

				


The
Good

BitDefender Total Security 2011 comes
off as a reliable suite that addresses any sort of
user, regardless of their computer knowledge
level. Its interface can be adjusted to multiple
degrees of control even in Basic and Intermediate
view by customizing the number of shortcuts in the
main menus.

System resource usage is kept
within acceptable parameters; during our tests it
required about 80MB for scan tasks while CPU usage
averaged between 50%-60%.

Smart Schedule
feature allows you to run scan jobs when computer
is idle, and pauses as soon as it is used again.
On the same note, scan times are lower thanks to
QuickScan and the fact that the engine does not
scan known operating system files.

The
Bad

Search Advisor does a fine job, but it
takes a while to load the safety marks for the
displayed results. Also, firewall pop-ups were
quite frequent and we received multiple messages
about adding a rule for the same application that
tried to connect to the Internet, despite the fact
that each time we gave full access to the
process.

During our scans it happened for
the application to require analysis of files
belonging to clean applications. The portable
version of Gimp is the example we were confronted
with.