Tuesday 10 May 2011

Avira Antivirus

Avira Antivirus:


Avira GmbH is a German antivirus software company. When founded, the company was called "H+BEDV Datentechnik GmbH". Its antivirus applications are based on the AntiVir scan engine also known as "Luke Filewalker" (referring to Luke Skywalker), first launched in 1988. For aesthetic reasons, the name was changed to Avira. Avira's engine has been licensed to Ashampoo, Ad-Aware, and Webroot WebWasher.Avira is one of the most widely used antivirus programs in the world, with 100 million users worldwide As of September 2009.The company supports the Auerbach Stiftung, a foundation created by the company's founder and CEO, Tjark Auerbach. It supports charitable, social, cultural, and science projects.                These applications are based on the AntiVir antivirus engine also known as "Luke Filewalker", first launched in 1988.
                On October 17, 2008, a major update to the search engine was released, which increased scanning speed by 20%.
                 Avira GmbH periodically "cleans out" the virus definition files, by replacing specific signatures with generic ones, which results in a general increase in performance and scanning speed. The last database clean-out was made on October 27, 2008, which caused problems to AntiVir Personal users when updating because of its large size (15 MB) and because of AntiVir Personal's slow servers. For that reason Avira GmbH added an additional 6 GB of bandwidth to the AntiVir Personal Servers and changed the updating process: Nowadays there are 32 smaller definition files which are updated regularly to avoid peaks in the download of updates.
Products :
         Avira AntiVir Personal is for personal use only and free of charge. Like most antivirus software, it scans disks for malwarerootkits.Avira AntiVir Premium or Avira Premium Security Suite. Avira updated all its products to version 10.0 in March 2010. and also runs as a background process, checking each opened and closed file. It can detect and possibly remove It also performs Internet updates (daily by default) in which it opens a window, with an advertisement suggesting that the user purchase

              As a free service, Avira offers a bootable rescue CD to all users, regardless of whether they have any installed Avira products (free or non-free), and irrespective of the machine's operating system. This CD contains its own bootable Linux-based operating system and the AntiVir program with its latest virus database. If a computer cannot be booted, the CD may be used to boot the machine into the AntiVir program, then to scan for and remove detectable viruses and other malware, thereby possibly restoring normal boot and operation.

Avira AntiVir Premium has several improvements over the free version, including:

  • Email scanning (POP3 and SMTP)
  • WebGuard to block access to malicious sites
Avira AntiVir Premium Security Suite has some more improvements over both versions, including:

  • Anti Spam for E-mail
  • Firewall blocks hackers
  • Backup System to protect and secure important data
  • AntiBot prevents dangerous botnets from taking over your system
  • Parental Controls blocks unsuitable websites for Children and Teens
Product feature summary:
Click on the image to view larger Image


Reviews :
        AV-Comparatives awarded Avira AntiVir Premium with the highest score, the "Advanced+" distinction, in February, May, and August 2008, earning it the 2008 "AV Product of the Year" award. This large-scale comparative test saw Avira achieve an "excellent" score for its proactive detection performance. In the "Speed" category, Avira made it to the winner’s podium.
            In January 2008, Avira AntiVir was given a rating of 6.5 out of 8 in tests for detection and removal of rootkits and 71% for proactive virus detection by Anti-Malware Test Lab; both scores qualified for "gold" status, the highest award. Avira achieved the highest Malware Detection rate, along with G-DATA Antivirus, 98%, and was one of five products that achieved a 90% or higher spyware detection rate in the latest AV-Test performed in February 2010. AV-Comparatives also awarded Avira with an Advanced+ rating (the highest) in their latest test. Avira had the highest signature and proactive detection rates in all major independent antivirus tests. In April 2009, PC Pro awarded Avira Premium Security Suite 9 six out of six stars and a place on its A-list for internet security software. In August 2009, Avira AntiVir Personal Antivirus achieved a 98.9% percent overall malware detection rate, and was the fastest for both on-demand scans and on-access scans conducted by PC World, who ranked it first on its website. Neil J. Rubenking from PC Magazine gave the latest version of Avira (version 10) 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Avira was among the first companies to receive OESIS OK Gold Certification. This shows that both the antispyware and antivirus components of several of their products have achieved the maximum compatibility score with widespread network technologies (like SSL/TLS VPN and Network Access Control) from Juniper Networks, Cisco Systems, SonicWALL and others.
Avira has also received VB100 awards, the most recent in August 2009.

Rogue software:

(with similar name) In July 2010, a rogue security program called "Antivir Solution Pro" was reported as a threat; it is probably from the family known as AV Security Suite. This software had nothing to do with nor had any affiliation with Avira, but used a similar name to Avira's software.

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