• Avast unveils new free modular platform
• Avast One offers free antivirus and scam protection, with optional extras
• Users only pay for the features they use

When it comes to choosing antivirus protection, there has always been a clear separation between the protection offered by free and paid services - an issue that has troubled money-savvy prosumers and budget-lovers alike.

But Avast may have just changed all that. From the baseline, its new Avast One platform includes powerful antivirus protection alongside the essential privacy protections required for the internet of today.

The free tier starts with industry leading antivirus protection, scam protection, and web protection. Should any extra features be needed - such as AI agent protection, a no-log VPN, data breach monitoring, or device cleanup - they can be added as individual modules, so users only pay for what they need.

A free, no-frills, essential online security suite

The new Avast One user journey starts on a single dashboard with free antivirus enabled. From this foundation, users can add the individual modules they need.

Avast One now does away with rigid subscription tiers with locked-in features that some users never use, instead allowing them to flexibly add the individual modules they need.

Outside of the free foundation, users can choose from a range of free and paid addons to improve security and privacy coverage. For example, users can opt to use the platform's free cleanup service to save hard drive space and remove dysfunctional shortcuts and software.

The same goes for the free BreachGuard personal information protection which can scan the dark web for exposure, and stop advertisers from loading sites with targeted advertisements.

"People know what they value and how they want to protect their digital lives," said Travis Witteveen, Head of Products and Portfolios at Gen. "Avast One has been designed to give you greater choice and control making it easy to personalize protection, manage features, and only pay for what you truly need."

For those that require enhanced protection to scan for suspicious emails, banking protection, and remote access protection, users can opt to include Premium Security as a paid addition. Or if a VPN is required, users can choose to pay for Avast’s SecureLine VPN, which comes with a 60-day free trial.

Cleanup can also be upgraded to Premium to include extra space-saving and speed-optimizing features. The same goes for BreachGuard to include leaked personal info alerts, data breach scanning, and access to a cornucopia of security tips and privacy advice.

• Avast warns of 10 common SMS scam types, including fake parcels and OTP theft
• Red flags include urgency, suspicious links, requests for codes, and unusual spelling or branding
• Best defense: ignore messages or forward spam to 7726 (SPAM) for carrier blocking

With Christmas behind us, and the New Year right around the corner, we’re in peak scam season - cybercriminals have all come out of the woodwork and are trying their best to trick you out of your money. With that in mind, security outfit Avast shared their tips on how to best defend from SMS scams.

Similar to phishing, SMS scams work by trying to trick you into clicking a link or downloading and running a malicious attachment. What makes them somewhat more dangerous is that mobile platforms are arguably defended less in comparison to desktop and laptop computers.

For Avast, there are 10 types of scams people should keep in mind these days:

Fake undelivered parcels
One-time password (OTP) or code theft
Tax refunds or fines
Fake refunds
Family or friend impersonation
Deals, prizes, or surveys
Job offers and side gigs (such as mystery shoppers or brand recruitment)
Crypto and investment opportunities
Callback and support scams
Fake account alerts (banks, crypto, email, social)

How to stay safe

All of these themes have a few things in common, Avast notes. The most obvious red flag is the sense of urgency that’s mandatory in all of them. Things like “final notice”, “urgent resolution”, or urging recipients to “act today” to not get their “account locked”. This is always cause for suspicion.

Plenty of these SMS messages also carry unexpected links, or shortened URLs. Links from services such as bit.ly or tinyurl may look harmless, “but it’s one of criminals’ main entry points,” the researchers said.

Then, there are requests for codes, PINs, or payments, which are always suspicious, since no real business will ever ask their customers to share their login credentials or other secrets.

Finally, unusual spelling or brand names, or pressure to switch communication channels, are all usual scam tactics.

The best way to defend against this type of scam is to simply ignore it. Those who wish to be a bit more proactive can forward all spam to 7726 (SPAM), helping their wireless provider spot and block similar messages.

Via Avast

AVG often tops the best antivirus software lists, though more frequently the list of best free antivirus. It does offer a paid plan, but then it enters the realm of heavy hitters such as Norton and Bitdefender.

However, AVG users prefer a more lightweight AV that won't break the bank; therefore, finding a suitable upgrade is not always easy.

That's why I have rounded up some top-tier AV that have powerful features and a range of use cases. Below, I have laid out exactly why these are the best alternatives to AVG AV.

Best AVG alternative overall

Features:

Outside of Norton's excellent antivirus and firewall protection, the 360 Standard plan will provide you with several additional features across 3 devices.

You'll be able to browse the web securely with Norton's AI Genie Scam Protection, a tool that can analyze the content of texts, phone calls, emails, and websites to check for hidden scams or fraud.

Additionally, you'll be able to use a password manager and an unlimited VPN to encrypt your internet traffic, and protect your sensitive files in a secure 2GB cloud backup. Norton 360 Standard also includes breach monitoring to score the dark web for any exposed credentials.

What Norton 360 lacks is a performance optimizer and a driver updater, but Norton's lightweight performance means it shouldn't have too much of an impact on your devices.

Security:

Norton has been one of the top-rated antivirus providers for some time, up there with the likes of Bitdefender, McAfee, and Norton.

In the latest tests by AV-Comparatives, Norton achieved a protection score of 99.5% with 9 false positives, making it one of the highest scoring antivirus solutions tested by AV-Comparatives.

In AV-Test real-world testing, Norton secured a 6/6 across the board for protection, performance, and usability, earning it a 'Top Product' badge.

Price:

Norton is the most affordable alternative to AVG, with a first year price of just $39.99, or $3.33 per month. After the introductory year, the renewal price rises to $99.94, which is also the lowest renewal cost on this list.

Best AVG Alternative for multi-device protection

Features:

McAfee+ Premium is the 'Core Protection' package, but it does include some additional features that make it a better alternative to AVG.

You get McAfee's tried and tested antivirus and firewall, alongside safe browsing protection, scam protection, a password manager, unlimited VPN, and dark web scans for credential breaches and personal information leakage.

For those with a household full of different devices, McAfee+ Premium is the definite choice. You can secure antivirus protection across an unlimited number of devices.

Security:

McAfee is one of the highest scoring antivirus solutions in terms of protection. In AV-Comparatives testing, it achieved a malware block rate of 99.96%. However, it did log 15 normal programs as malware during testing.

In the AV-Test results, McAfee also scored highly, achieving 6/6 across protection, performance, and usability, also earning it the 'Top Product' award.

Price:

McAfee's pricing sits nicely in the mid-point on this list at $49.99 for the first year, or around $4.16 per month. The one thing to be wary of is the renewal pricing, which ups the price to $149.99, making it one of the most expensive antivirus solutions on this list when it comes to renewal by around $50.

Best AVG Alternative for protection score

Features:

As you'll read below, Bitdefender's reputation for protection is not unfounded. It has been one of the best performing antivirus solutions for several years. Outside of Bitdefender's antivirus and firewall, you'll be provided with safe browsing capabilities, scam detection, leaked credential monitoring and a VPN. The VPN does have a daily cap of 200MB/day however.

Security:

As I mentioned, Bitdefender's protection is near perfect. In Av-Comparatives testing, Bitdefender missed hitting top marks by just 0.2%, with a surprisingly low false-positive rate of just 3, making it the best performing antivirus in the latest testing.

As expected, Bitdefender also scored very well in AV-Test results, 6/6 across protection, performance, and usability. Again, Bitdefender also earned AV-Test's 'Top Product' award.

Price:

Protection of this level does come at a cost. Bitdefender Total Security's introductory price sits at $59.99 for the first year, or $4.99 per month. The renewal price is also quite high at $109.99.

Best AVG Alternative for the essentials

Features:

When it comes to features, Avast Premium is a little sparse. You get the essential antivirus and smart firewall, but outside of a performance optimizer and scam protection, there isn't much else to add.

Avast Premium does include browser based password protection, but falls short of offering a dedicated password manager. There are a few other nice-to-haves included in the plan though, such as a tool for permanently and securely deleting files, and a sandbox that can be used to open 'risky files' without them potentially infecting your device.

On the upside, you do get protection across 10 devices, making it another good choice if you're looking for multi-device protection.

Security:

Avast scored very well in the latest AV-Comparatives testing, with a protection score of 99.5%. It did however pick up 15 false-positives, which could be an issue for those who don't want frequent interruptions from their antivirus.

On the AV-Test side of things, Avast also holds up under pressure, again scoring 6/6 across protection, performance, and usability with Avast matching up to the other alternatives on this list and earning the 'Top Product' award.

Price:

Avast is the most expensive alternative to AVG on this list, with the introductory pricing for the first year sitting at $69.48, working out at $5.79.

However, the renewal pricing jump isn't too bad, with renewal costing just $99.99 per year. Avast is therefore the best alternative to AVG for the essentials, offering excellent protection across 10 devices.

Comparison

Check out our guide to the best antivirus software for even more alternatives

If you are among the millions of users affected by the ban on Kaspersky sales by the US, then fear not. Rest assured that there is other equally, if not better, antivirus software to keep you protected online.

Equally important, you should try and find a reputable supplier that offers similar functionality so you do not miss out on any critical features that make your life easy.

Luckily, there are a range of Kaspersky alternatives that offer exactly the same level of protection, and some even through in some extra features to keep you safe online!

Best Kaspersky alternative overall

Features:

The Norton 360 Standard suite contains almost everything you need to replace your Kaspersky antivirus, and even throws in several extra goodies to tempt you.

This package includes Norton's award winning antivirus software that frequently scores highly in both our own testing and in testing done by third party laboratories.

You also get access to a highly configurable firewall, alongside safe browsing protection that includes payment protection, and dark web monitoring, and even includes Genie scam protection; and AI powered tool that can quickly spot nefarious scams.

As an added bonus to your personal privacy, Norton 360 standard also throws in a password manager, VPN with kill switch and IP rotation, and a 2GB cloud backup for important files.

The one tool that Norton 360 Standard is missing is a performance optimizer, but Norton has earned top marks in the latest AV-Test performance scores, so you'll hardly know its there.

Security:

When it comes to protection, Norton is one of the best performing antivirus solutions on the market. The software frequently receives three stars from AV-Comparatives in their real-world testing scenarios without letting malware slip through the net or picking up too many false-positives.

In the latest testing from June 2025, Norton detected 99.5% of the sample threats with 9 false-positives, making it a more than capable solution to replace your existing Kaspersky antivirus.

Price:

Norton 360 Standard is priced at an introductory rate of $39.99, putting the per month cost at $3.33. Norton 360 Standard only provides protection for one device.

However, after the first introductory year, the price jumps to $94.99. While not the most expensive renewal cost on this list the pricing can appear quite steep. However, with Norton 360 Standard you are getting a wide range of features at an excellent price point compared to the other services on this list - making it the best Kaspersky alternative.

Best Kaspersky Alternative for all-in-one protection

Features:

Avast Premium Security offers everything you would expect from antivirus software at this price point. You'll have access to Avast's signature antivirus software complete with firewall, and safe browsing protections including secure payment protection.

Unlike Norton 360 Standard, Avast Premium Security includes an Email Guardian scam filter. Plus, you'll also to dark web monitoring to spot compromised credentials linked to your email account.

What this package is missing is a password manager and cloud backup, but for a price as low as this I think it is still worth the money, and definitely a good budget alternative for Kaspersky.

Security:

Avast is another name that frequent the top of the list when it comes to antivirus protection. In the latest testing from AV-Comparatives, Avast blocked 99.5% of threats, but had a rather high false-positive rate, detecting 15 files as malware.

When it comes other lab testing, Avast scored top marks from AV-Test, achieving a maximum score of 6/6 across protection, performance, and usability, awarding Avast the Top Product badge.

Price:

Avast is the budget option on this list for a reason, with an introductory price of $31.20, or $2.60 per month.

The renewal price also makes it a great budget alternative to Kaspersky, offering the lowest renewal price on this list at just $77.99.

Best Kaspersky Alternative for multi-device

Features:

Bitdefender has maintained our top pick for the best antivirus software for some time - and with good reason. Bitdefender has consistently been one of the highest performing antivirus solutions on the market, consistently raking in top marks in our own testing and in the testing done by AV-Test and AV-Comparatives.

Bitdefender Total Security gives you 1 account to use with protection across up to 5 devices, alongside a firewall, safe browsing protection, online payment and scam protection, and a system optimizer to keep things running smoothly.

Additionally, Bitdefender Total Security includes a VPN with a 200MB/day limit, and dark web monitoring for breached accounts.

Security:

As mentioned before, Bitdefender consistently scores highly in tests. The latest AV-Comparatives test from June 2025 place Bitdefender's protection at 99.8% with just 3 false positives.

Bitdefender also received an 'Outstanding' rating by AV-Test in their latest results, with a 6/6 for performance, protection, and usability, also earning Bitdefender the Top Product award.

Price:

Protection levels such as these do come at a premium, with Bitdefender Total Security costing $59.99 at its introductory rate, or $4.99 per month. The renewal cost rises to $109.99.

Keep in mind however that Bitdefender Total Security gives you protection across 5 devices compared to the other plans on this list, which may offset the increased price if you have more devices to protect.

Best Kaspersky alternative for simplicity

Features:

Compared to the other solutions on this list, AVG Internet Security offers fewer features at a similar price point.

You get access to all the essentials, including protection for one device, firewall, safe browsing and payment protection, a performance optimizer, and scam protection.

The list of features is slightly less than the other solutions, with the lack of a password manager, breach monitoring, and VPN being significant reductions in protection compared to the other plans.

However, if you are looking for a simple plan without too many frills, bells, or whistles, AVG Internet Security is the choice for you.

Security:

In the latest AV-Comparatives testing, AVG scored a protection rate of 99.3% with a false positive rate of 13. It is still a very capable software, and these tests are by no means a comprehensive display of antivirus performance, but there is the potential for this antivirus to pick up normal software as malware during scans.

AVG almost scored top marks in recent AV-Test testing, with a 6 in protection, 5.5 in performance, and 6 in usability. The tests showed slightly slower launching of software while the antivirus is running, but it is fairly minimal and shouldn't impact day-to-day activities too much.

Price:

AVG Internet Security sits in the middle of the road when it comes to pricing, matching Norton 360 Standard's $39.99, or $3.33 per month. Renewal is slightly higher though, at $99.99.

For the features on offer, AVG Internet Security seems slightly overpriced compared to some of the protection and features offered by the other plans. However, if you are looking for simplicity with good protection, AVG is the one for you.

Comparison

Check out our guide to the best antivirus software for even more alternatives

Q&A

While it may be true that McAfee has been around for quite some time, and that it holds a sizable market share among the best antivirus software, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the best at what it does.

Numerous new devices come preinstalled with McAfee, but users occasionally complain about its missing features, higher costs and, at times, slowdowns they experience on their machines while using it.

Nevertheless, McAfee has a lot to offer in terms of its protection prowess, so finding a suitable alternative may prove to be a challenge. For this exact reason, we would like to share the best alternatives we’ve found for McAfee. Let’s take a look!

Best McAfee alternative

Features:

At this pricing tier, Norton 360 Deluxe offers the greatest range of features compared to any other McAfee alternative on this list.

Outside of the obvious inclusions in an antivirus product (antivirus, malware removal, firewall), this plan provides you with the additional online browsing nice-to-haves such as safe browsing protection, payment and scam protection, a password manager and an unlimited VPN.

As for the features that improve day-to-day life, Norton 360 Deluxe adds a 50GB cloud backup, dark web monitoring for compromised accounts, and parental controls to keep the household safe.

The one feature that Norton 360 Deluxe is missing is a PC performance optimizer, but considering the price point and array of features, this is a fairly minor sticking point.

Security:

Norton is one of the top performing antivirus solutions around. Norton has received the full three stars from AV-Comparatives in their real-world testing scenarios, blocking 99.5% of the malware samples with only 9 false-positives.

AV-Test scores are also impressive, with 6/6 across the board for protection, performance, and usability, earning it the 'Top Product' badge.

Price:

When it comes to price, Norton 360 Deluxe gets additional points for being the cheapest on this list. It also matches the price of McAfee Premium while offering significantly more bang for your buck.

The first year is currently $49.99, working out at around $4.16 per month. The renewal price on the other hand is the most expensive on the list, sitting at $199.99, so the cost over two years is somewhere in the middle.

Overall, for the number of features and the excellent level of protection, this is definitely a worthwhile investment to keep your files and devices safe.

Best McAfee Alternative for multi-device protection

Features:

When it comes to features, AVG Ultimate offers a good range, but maybe not quite everything you're looking for.

It includes all the essentials such as antivirus, malware removal, firewall, safe browsing and payment protection, scam protection, a VPN and breach monitoring, but doesn't include a cloud backup, password manager, or parental controls like Norton 360 Deluxe does.

But considering you can protect 10 devices with everything you need to keep your data safe and your device free from malware, its quite a good feature set overall.

Security:

In AV-Comparatives testing, AVG scored slightly lower than Norton with a protection rate of 99.3%, and a false positive rate of 13, making it a highly capable bit of kit that might recognize a few more of your programs as malware.

Recent AV-Test testing saw AVG score very well, with a 6 in protection, 5.5 in performance, and 6 in usability. AVG might make it take slightly longer for your other programs to launch while your system is being scanned, but the impact is negligible.

Price:

The initial cost for AVG Ultimate is slightly more expensive than Norton 360 Deluxe, with a first year price of $59.88, rounding out at about $4.99 per month. However, the renewal cost is $139.99, making it a potential option for those looking for long term protection across a large range of devices.

Best McAfee Alternative for protection score

Features:

Bitdefender Total Security gives you protection across up to 5 devices, alongside a firewall, safe browsing protection, online payment and scam protection, and a system optimizer.

Additionally, Bitdefender Total Security includes a VPN with a 200MB/day limit, and dark web monitoring for breached accounts.

However, just like AVG Ultimate, you don't get access to a password manager, cloud backup, or parental controls.

Security:

Bitdefender has consistently been one of the highest performing antivirus solutions on the market, frequently raking in top marks in our own testing and in the testing done by the third-party labs.

Bitdefender received an 'Outstanding' rating by AV-Test in their latest results, with a 6/6 for performance, protection, and usability, also earning Bitdefender the Top Product award.

The latest AV-Comparatives test from June 2025 place Bitdefender's protection at 99.8% with just 3 false positives, making it the most capable antivirus in terms of real-world protection.

Price:

Bitdefender Total Security puts a premium on such high performance, with an initial cost of $59.99, or $4.99 per month. The renewal cost is one of the lowest however, at just $109.99, making it a fairly good choice for a long term budget.

Best McAfee alternative for PC performance

Features:

Avast Ultimate's feature set is fairly sparse compared to the other options on this list. Outside of the essentials (antivirus, malware removal, firewall, safe browsing and payment protection, and scam protection), Avast only includes a VPN. However, if you are looking to have your device perform at the optimal level, this could be the choice for you.

Avast's Cleanup Premium is included in this plan, giving you tracking protection, junk cleanup that can be automated, and a disk-cleaner to keep your storage optimized and free from clutter.

Security:

Avast also offers great antivirus protection. In the latest testing from AV-Comparatives, Avast blocked an impressive 99.5% of threats, but had a rather high false-positive rate, detecting 15 normal files as malware.

When it comes other lab testing, Avast scored top marks from AV-Test, achieving a maximum score of 6/6 across protection, performance, and usability, awarding Avast the Top Product badge.

Price:

Avast Ultimate has the highest initial cost on this list at $69.99, or $5.83 per month for the first year. This compounded by the fact that you only get protection on a single device, also making it the most expensive option on a per-device-protection level.

After the first year, things don't get much better. The renewal cost is $139.99, but for the suite of device cleanup and optimization tools, it could be worth it for some.

Comparison

Check out our guide to the best antivirus software for even more alternatives

For two decades now, Bitdefender has been offering great features in the antivirus software and anti-malware space, protecting over 500 million devices across the globe.

Its Ultimate Security Plus package covers almost everything you may need from an antivirus suite; however, that doesn’t mean that there are no alternatives to it. If you want to move away from Bitdefender or simply see what else is out there as a good alternative, then you’re in the right place.

Below, we present our best alternatives to Bitdefender antivirus as well as features that would make us switch.

Check out our guide to the best antivirus software for even more alternatives

Best Bitdefender alternative overall

Features:

The Norton 360 with LifeLock is probably the most comprehensive security suite you can get. It includes Norton's award winning antivirus software, alongside numerous privacy and security features, and LifeLock identity theft protection with credit monitoring.

On the security side, you'll pick up a configurable firewall, safe browsing and payment protection, dark web monitoring, and Genie scam protection.

On the privacy side, Norton also throws in a password manager, VPN with kill switch and IP rotation, and a 250GB cloud backup for important files and documents. All of the security and privacy features are available across 10 devices.

The identity theft protection is some of the best in the industry, with Norton offering LifeLock protection that includes up to $1,000,000 for lawyer fees, up to $1,000,000 stolen funds reimbursement, and up to $1,000,000 personal expense reimbursement.

LifeLock also includes three bureau credit monitoring alongside 401(k) and Investment Account monitoring.

The one thing Norton doesn't have is a built in performance optimizer. Luckily, Norton frequently scores very well in third party testing and our own testing for having a very minimal impact on system performance while running.

Security:

Norton is one of the best performing antivirus solutions on the market, and has been for some time. In the latest tests, Norton antivirus was awarded three stars from AV-Comparatives in their real-world scenarios. Norton detected 99.5% of the sample threats with 9 false-positives, making it more than capable of replacing your Bitdefender protection.

Price:

Norton 360 with LifeLock has an introductory rate of $99.99 for the first year, putting the per month cost at $8.33. For comparison, Bitdefender Ultimate Security Plus costs $119.99 for the first year.

The renewal price does jump to $189.99. While not the most expensive renewal cost on this list the pricing can appear quite steep. But for the cost, you are getting a comprehensive security suite for 10 devices with some of the strongest identity theft protection around.

Best Bitdefender Alternative for budget

Features:

Avast Ultimate is another antivirus suite that offers an excellent range of features to replace your existing Bitdefender antivirus. You'll have access to Avast's signature antivirus software complete with firewall, and safe browsing protections including secure payment and scam protection across up to 10 devices.

Alongside access to an unlimited VPN with over 50 server locations, Avast Ultimate also includes several performance management tools, including an automatic software updater, app optimizer, disk cleanup, and a driver updating tool.

Avast Ultimate doesn't include identity theft protection, nor does it have a password manager or cloud backup, but as a replacement for Bitdefender, Avast is a solid choice in both protection and pricing.

Security:

Similar to Norton and Bitdefender, Avast has been a brand that offers award winning antivirus protection. Avast scored top marks from AV-Test, achieving a score of 6/6 across protection, performance, and usability. Avast blocked 99.5% of threats in the latest testing from AV-Comparatives, but detected 15 safe files as malware.

Price:

Currently, Avast sits at a very fair price point, especially with the current discount that cuts the introductory cost to $69.48 for the first year, which to translates to $5.79 per month.

The renewal price is also very fair, and offers an excellent long term solution as an alternative to Bitdefender, with the price after the first year sitting at $139.99.

Best Bitdefender Alternative for data protection

Features:

ESET is a lesser-know antivirus software that offers good levels of protection, with a set of particularly good features that revolve around data security.

In the Home Security Ultimate package, you'll get antivirus, a firewall, malware removal, safe payment, scam, and browsing protection, alongside a password manager and dark web monitoring. ESET also include a VPN with unlimited bandwidth. The plan covers 5 devices.

On the identity side of things, ESET Home Security Ultimate offers up to $1,000,000 in reimbursement if your identity is stolen, with 1 bureau credit monitoring.

Now, the data protection features include file and folder security settings, so only programs you approve can modify or access your files, an encryption tool to keep documents and external drives secured even if they are lost, and the ability to remove metadata from images before uploading.

Security:

Despite being a smaller name than the big providers, ESET is also tested by the third party labs. In a recent AV-Comparatives test, ESET protected against 99.1% of malware samples, giving it the lowest score on this list, but still providing excellent protection. During the test it only picked up 3 false-positive detections. In AV-Test testing, ESET scored 6/6 across the board.

Price:

ESET Home Security Ultimate is the most expensive software on this list, with a first year price of $125.99, or $10.49 per month. The renewal price matches the others on this list at $179.99.

The price may be a bit steep for some, but for those looking for a solid antivirus suite with a focus on data protection, ESET is the pick for you.

Comparison

Check out our guide to the best antivirus software for even more alternatives

Every time you establish an internet connection (which is pretty much as soon as you power on the device), there’s a small possibility of contracting malware.

The best antivirus software is a nice way to minimize the possibility of this happening, but still, deciding on a vendor is generally not easy.

For instance, if you’re undecided between Avast and Norton, the issue is that they’re both so effective in safeguarding users from malicious software that settling on one is pretty challenging, especially when you consider that getting an AV is a long-term commitment.

Fortunately, the differences become apparent when you stack them up against each other, feature for feature. By extension, it gets a bit easier to find the security solution that works best for you.

Avast versus Norton: Background

Despite starting as far back as 1988 in Czechoslovakia and establishing itself as a capable antivirus (at one point it even licensed its engines to popular AV vendors like McAfee), Avast only became mainstream in the early 2000s when it switched to a freemium model. Today, in addition to providing a total security suite with advanced features, Avast’s core protection is still available for free and safeguards millions of devices around the world.

Norton started life in 1982 and built up such a solid reputation so fast that it completely dominated the home antivirus market in the 90s and early 2000s. Despite facing competition from equally capable solutions, its name is still associated with the term antivirus in some circles.

It’s interesting that these two are often pitted against each other, because they technically come from the same company, so to speak, as Norton acquired Avast back in 2021.

Avast versus Norton: Security features

Before breaking down the features, note that Avast and Norton will dramatically boost your overall security, as both vendors knock it out of the ballpark in terms of core malware protection. Unsurprisingly, the reason for this is that they’re powered by the same Avast antivirus engine.

Since they operate almost identically, the features, resource usage, and pricing will be what ultimately decides which product is better.

So, without further ado, it’s time to commence the Avast vs Norton deep dive.

Real-time threat detection

Avast actively monitors your device and scrutinizes both file and app behavior, springing into action by blocking any potentially harmful activities before they wreak havoc on the system. Moreover, its Wi-Fi security scanner keeps an eye on remote connection requests, while also checking if your email address was a part of a data breach – super useful.

Similarly, Norton employs AI and machine learning to provide real-time defense against threats ranging from phishing and ransomware to malware. Despite blocking over 95% of test links we used during our evaluation, Norton and Avast tend to throw a lot of false positives your way (more on that later).

Firewall

A strong firewall is a necessary part of every powerful AV suite, and Avast and Norton deliver the goods.

Avast takes full control of both the ingoing and outgoing traffic, blocking any unauthorized connections and activity. The thing we like is the simplicity in terms of protection levels, as you can add extra limitations for stronger defense or make the firewall more lax, allowing it to let additional connections through.

Norton is similar in that it protects outgoing and ingoing traffic and offers an equal level of customization. However, its Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) tips the battle in its favor. This functions as another layer to the firewall that monitors traffic that has already passed through, which, logically, provides a stronger defense against more advanced threats.

Identity theft protection

If your identity is compromised, you can rely on Avast and Norton to get things under control. That is, if you opt for their most expensive premium tiers.

With Avast One, you get the basics like credit monitoring, professional assistance from Avast’s experts, and up to $1M identity theft compensation.

Norton’s Select tier identity theft protection is much more powerful. By partnering up with LifeLock, Norton supplies a full-on service with comprehensive features such as identity lock, credit monitoring, SSN and credit alerts, as well as wallet protection. Similar to Avast, Norton includes personal assistance, courtesy of identity theft restoration specialists and up to $1M in compensation.

VPN

Since VPN enhances your online security by keeping everything you do under wraps, most vendors include a VPN in their AV suites.

That’s good news for those strapped for cash, as Avast offers a basic VPN even in its free subscription. While this is a welcome treat, you’ll have to contend with a weekly 5GB data cap, meaning that streaming or other bandwidth-heavy activity is out of the question. You also can’t choose locations yourself, as the VPN will automatically connect you to the nearest server. Upgrading to any paid tier eliminates these limitations and allows you to connect to 59 locations.

Norton’s VPN is much more serious and can even rival some of the best VPN services on the market. For starters, its server network includes 100 global locations. There are also some additional “big boy” features that provide more security and value, including a kill switch, IP rotation, simultaneous device connections, and ad blocking.

Password manager

The majority of antivirus vendors integrate password managers into premium packages. Sadly, Avast isn’t one of them. Despite offering a dedicated product, Avast doesn’t include it in any of its Avast One subscriptions.

Norton is much more generous in this regard, offering a nifty browser-based management tool that allows you to share credentials across devices. It may not be as comprehensive as some of the top password managers, but Norton does have auto-fill capabilities and a handy password generator.

Parental controls

Another thing missing from Avast is any semblance of parental control features. Although there’s no shortage of parental control apps you can use instead, this omission is disappointing, considering most of the big vendors offer some features.

Norton delivers in this department. In addition to easy-to-use parental controls that provide insight into your child’s browsing habits, app activities, and screen time, you can easily blacklist websites and block whole content categories.

The most powerful feature is GPS tracking that helps monitor the whereabouts of juniors, and you can even go as far as limiting geographic areas, allowing you to receive a notification if the child you’re tracking breaks some of the rules.

Other security features

Along with these more essential features, Avast and Norton come out of the box with some extra goodies that can serve as a nice addition to your security arsenal.

The file shredder feature (Norton refers to it as a Data Shredder) is amazing if you want to make certain that deleted files will be gone for good and aren’t recoverable by threat actors. Both providers also have security functions that prevent untrusted apps from accessing your webcam. Avast is a bit better here as its Webcam Shield also protects your microphone.

Norton makes up for this slight oversight with Dark Web Monitoring, a powerful way to be in the loop if your private data has been leaked to the dark web. Avast One may not be as comprehensive, but it does allow you to check if your email addresses were involved in a data breach.

The two also include private browsers designed to enhance your browsing security, but Norton takes it up a notch with cloud backup functionality – a proactive way to preserve your files from data loss.

Lastly, Avast comes prepackaged with useful tools such as PC Speedup (optimizes apps that are slowing down your system), a Disk Cleaner that helps free up space, and a driver updater tool.

Avast versus Norton: System performance

When compared to Norton, Avast may seem unimpressive. Yet, it comes close to bridging this gap when you take a closer look at its low resource usage.

The latest performance test by AV-Comparatives paints a positive picture. The vendor had a 3.8 impact score (the lower the score, the faster the AV), which means that Avast is second only to McAfee in terms of system performance.

During the same series of tests, Norton achieved an impact score of 4.6, closely trailing behind Avast with a marginally slower performance.

Factoring in that some reputable AV solutions like Avira, Malwarebytes, and Bitdefender have impact scores over 15, you really can’t go wrong with Norton or Avast.

Avast versus Norton: Ease of use

The key design principle with all Avast products has always been simplicity. Regardless of the solution you choose, you can always expect the customer experience to be enjoyable, and the Avast One suite is no exception.

Opting for a more cartoony look with a white background (Avast is generally known for its darker theme), the interface is as intuitive as ever. For example, you’ll find the most important features on the ‘Home’ screen. That way, you can quickly take action if any pressing matters pop up.

To run scans or configure advanced features such as the VPN or the firewall, simply navigate to the ‘Explore’ menu on the left sidebar.

A sleek and streamlined UX is certainly welcome, especially for users who are unfamiliar with antivirus solutions and lack the technical know-how. Still, more technically inclined users may find this approach too simplistic and restrictive.

Norton also offers a well-designed, intuitive interface, though it’s slightly more complex.

For starters, it includes more information and settings. Those looking for granular control over their AV will feel right at home, but beginners may find the whole thing more confusing and frustrating. Some functions also require more effort to access, like Dark Web Monitoring and parental controls not being included in the app. Rather, they’re browser-based, which may turn off users who want a more centralized suite.

It’s only fair to crown Avast a winner in this department, though ultimately, the choice is down to personal preference.

Avast versus Norton: Protection

Password managers, PC cleanup tools, and snappy interfaces are all good and well. Still, the most important thing for an antivirus is its efficiency against malware.

Fortunately, these two are right on money. As we previously mentioned, they use the same antivirus engine, so the results are pretty much identical.

Malware protection tests from March 2025 conducted by AV-Comparatives confirm this. Both had a 99.3% online detection rate, 99.96% online protection rate, and 99.7% offline detection rate. These high scores come at a slight cost, as the duo raised 10 false alarms during the course of the testing.

That minor issue aside, Avast and Norton are highly effective when it comes to core protection and will likely work great against all known threats you may encounter.

Avast versus Norton: Pricing

Though the engine they use is the same, the list of features is quite different, and so is the price.

Let’s start with Avast, which is the more economical of the two.

If you require the basics, the aptly named ‘Basic’ tier will likely have everything you’ll ever need, considering that there are no limitations in terms of the core antivirus protection. However, the best way to describe its features is a ghost town, as you’ll be limited to one device and have to deal with a VPN that has only one location and a data cap.

The next tier is Avast One Silver Individual, which costs $35.88 per year. It sheds most of these restrictions and unlocks features such as the firewall. Yet, the real fun starts with Avast One Gold, since it comes with identity protection features and extends the protection to five devices for a reasonable yearly price of $83.88.

The family version of both plans exists, costing $59.88 or $113.88 per year, and extends the protection to a whopping 30 devices.

More expensive overall, Norton not only comes with more features but also offers more variety in terms of plans.

Pricing starts at $29.99 annually for one device with the AntiVirus Plus tier. The Standard plan costs $39.99 per year for three devices, while Deluxe offers protection for five devices at $49.99 annually. The most comprehensive option, the Select package, supports up to ten devices for $99.99 per year.

Avast versus Norton: Which is best?

While it seems like an underwhelming end to an epic antivirus battle, the fact that both solutions are cut from the same cloth is a good thing. So, the decision completely rests on personal preference:

If you need a low-cost AV with a minimal impact on your system and a clean interface, then go with Avast. In case you require a comprehensive security suite with an amazing VPN and advanced features like identity theft protection and parental controls, you can’t beat Norton.

Bottom line, you’ll be safe with either provider.

When it comes to the best antivirus software, ESET and Avast are routinely in the conversation, and for good reason - they deliver on their promise of online freedom and protection for individual and business users. Solutions aimed at the former group will be the focus of this article, so if you’ve narrowed down the choice to these two vendors, you’re off to a great start.

Now, it’s a matter of getting into the nitty-gritty to figure out which one does what exactly, as antivirus software these days includes all kinds of stuff. In the next 10 minutes or so, we’ll cover every aspect of ESET’s and Avast’s antivirus offerings, from their malware detection rates and ease of use to available features and everything in between.

Each has its strengths and weaknesses, and we’ll supply you with both so you can make the best (and informed) decision on which one is better for your needs.

ESET versus Avast: Background

Founded in 1992 in Bratislava, Slovakia, ESET is a privately-owned, global cybersecurity company whose origins go back to 1987, when two of its founders developed their first antivirus program called ‘NOD’. The company’s NOD32 antivirus is a, well, nod to its beginnings, and highly popular with individual users due to its lightweight performance and excellent detection capabilities. ESET also has a notable presence in the business security market, especially for SMBs.

Some 330 kilometers to the northwest, Avast was formed in 1988 in Prague, Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia). As another multinational cybersecurity software player, the company pioneered the freemium model in 2001, which largely helped it shoot to the top of the consumer antivirus market. In September 2022, Avast was acquired by NortonLifeLock (rebranded to Gen Digital Inc.), operating as a subsidiary under the Gen Digital umbrella - much like Norton, AVG, LifeLock, and Avira.

Both hold a significant share of the home user market, and more importantly, offer a similar antivirus product portfolio, either as core security technologies or add-ons found in their highest-tier packages. So, the only tangible difference might be the level of user-friendliness and, of course, the price tag.

ESET versus Avast: Security features

As the company’s most comprehensive AV solution, ESET Home Security (you might know it by its previous name, ESET Internet Security) comes with three subscription tiers, starting with solid core protection and adding more security (and utility) layers with each plan.

On the other hand, Avast One is the all-in-one consumer option that balances antivirus with privacy and performance tools, ranging from the Basic (and free) plan to the Gold subscription. Family options are included for each tier.

What’s important is that the two companies supply robust core antivirus protection, so you'll find a common set of essential security features in their offerings. This includes potent real-time threat detection, a capable firewall, anti-phishing and anti-spyware mechanisms, and ransomware protection, among other things.

Real-time threat detection

In the antivirus circles, ESET is renowned for its sophisticated, lightweight malware detection. It employs a multi-layered engine that contains advanced heuristics, machine learning, signature- and cloud-based scanning (called ESET LiveGrid) to identify and neutralize emerging threats with remarkable accuracy, often without causing unnecessary alerts. Its effectiveness in catching new and unknown threats is a consistent highlight in independent lab tests, earning it high marks for protection.

Avast, potentially provides even more powerful malware-stopping abilities, consistently performing well in independent evaluations for its real-time defense. Its massive user base contributes to a vast threat intelligence network, and in conjunction with AI-driven heuristics, allows it to quickly identify and respond to new dangers. The provider prides itself on near-perfect detection rates, even for new online threats.

Firewall

ESET's firewall is highly regarded for its configurable options, offering users granular control over network traffic and incoming connections. It works diligently in the background, identifying suspicious network activity and providing advanced users with the tools to fine-tune their network security. It does a great job of blocking unauthorized access and alerting you to potential vulnerabilities on your network.

There is also a handy firewall Learning Mode meant to ease the initial configuration, as you can automatically create and save rules based on specific parameters you define. That said, ESET warns against its permanent use since all outgoing and incoming communications are allowed, which means your device is not fully protected by the firewall.

Avast's firewall is designed in the same vein, safeguarding against network attacks and controlling which applications can access the internet via application and network-based rules. It works as intended to prevent untrusted programs from communicating externally and is integrated into the broader Avast One suite to offer comprehensive network defense.

The firewall also has a few handy options, such as ‘Gamer Mode’ to pause notifications and maximize performance when gaming sessions kick in, Leak Protection to prevent your computer from leaking potentially sensitive information to the network, and Port Scan Alerts to alert you in case threat actors or malware attempt to scan your device for open ports.

Identity theft protection

This is arguably the first area where the two companies diverge, reflecting their philosophies and market strategies.

ESET's focus on identity theft protection is reserved for its Ultimate tier, where it focuses more on proactive dark web and social media monitoring and alerts, notifying you if your data is exposed, and offering somewhat limited assistance for recovery. The company frames this aspect as part of its broader "proactive identity protection" rather than a deeply integrated identity theft service.

That is best evidenced in lower tiers that don't come with identity theft protection per se, relying more on essential security features to prevent data breaches on your device (like anti-phishing and secure banking). In other words, while they protect your device from malware that could lead to identity theft, they don't actively monitor your identity data for leaks or provide recovery services.

Avast One's approach to identity theft protection is a bit more meaningful, as it's integrated into all of its plans and notably more encompassing in higher ones. Avast One Gold steps up from the basic dark web monitoring found in lower tiers and introduces features like BreachGuard, which is a more advanced level of data breach monitoring, generally offering a more proactive approach to safeguarding your identity.

However, it stops short of the full-scale restoration services and credit monitoring you’ll find in Avast One Platinum, a product primarily targeted at the US market. It acts as one big identity safety net, offering SSN tracking, lost wallet assistance, and hands-on restoration services with financial reimbursement.

VPN

ESET offers a VPN, but it's included solely in its highest-tier solution. If you have money to splurge on that package, then the VPN you’ll get will come with unlimited access and a host of usual VPN features like split tunneling (you set which apps are covered by your encrypted VPN tunnel and which ones bypass it), public Wi-Fi and DNS leak protections, and over 60 locations to choose from. Though it can’t compete with the best VPN service and their array of bells and whistles, it’s more than a capable addition to the overall security posture.

By contrast, Avast bundles its VPN in all Avast One offerings, including a relatively generous data allowance (5 GB/week) in its free tier, though with location limitations. While functional for basic privacy needs, it doesn’t offer an extensive server network nor as many features as its competitor today, even with paid plans. Instead, the VPN feels more like a supplementary feature, likely because Avast offers a separate VPN product called Avast SecureLine VPN, where all the advanced features and server options are stashed.

Password manager

ESET includes a password manager for Android, iOS, and Mac, as well as browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. It provides secure storage and generation of strong passwords with multi-factor authentication options, thus simplifying the management of credentials securely across devices. You can also import passwords from various browsers and password managers.

Interestingly, Avast doesn't always offer a full-fledged password manager in the traditional sense, so you can forget about the basics like password creation and auto-filling. Its emphasis is on alerting users if their credentials have been exposed in a breach. There is a feature called Browser Shield, which limits access to passwords stored in your browser, so there’s that.

Parental controls

Through fundamental parental control app functionalities, ESET focuses on content filtering and activity logging. While it allows for blocking of certain content types and monitoring online behavior, it offers a more streamlined set of features compared to some competitors in the AV field, lacking more advanced options like time restrictions for device usage.

Nonetheless, it’s far better than what Avast One brings to the table, which is nada. It doesn’t include built-in parental controls, but rather supplementary features like Web Shield to block specific websites (along with a basic VPN) for online protection of the little ones.

ESET versus Avast: System performance

For many years, ESET has consistently been praised for its minimal impact on system performance. Independent lab tests often highlight ESET as one of the lightest antivirus solutions, praising its ability to keep your computer running smoothly even during scans or when performing demanding tasks. The latest April 2025 tests from AV-Test put the company’s Ultimate package as one of the lower-rated (but still very good) Windows 11 AVs in terms of performance, earning a score of 5.5 out of 6.

During the same tests, Avast came ahead of ESET, scoring a maximum of 6 points. This isn’t surprising, since Avast has a reputation for being very light on resources, even during intensive operations. Both companies are clearly committed to making sure that their solutions don't bog down your system, allowing for a seamless digital experience.

In the Performance Test by AV-Comparatives from the same month, Avast’s free offering was a runner-up with an impact score of 3.8 (the lower the score, the better), while ESET’s HOME Security Essential 18.1 came up seventh with a 9.5 impact score. Both solutions earned the ‘Advanced+’ award - the highest one.

So, if you’re operating on an older machine or prioritize speed, ESET and Avast will be excellent choices.

ESET versus Avast: Ease of use

It’s no secret that interacting with your antivirus can greatly impact how (and in some cases, if) you use its features. There are minimal differences here in terms of user-friendliness, but there are some slightly contrasting preferences apparent.

ESET's user interface is best described as clean, professional, and highly configurable. It might appear simpler on the surface, but once you scratch beneath the veneer, you’ll see that it offers considerable depth for advanced users who want to tinker with settings. That’s not to say that beginners will face hurdles on their way, since the main dashboard provides a clear overview without being overwhelming.

Avast's interface is designed to be sleek, modern, and exceptionally user-friendly. It’s a great example of how ease of access should be implemented when there is a broad range of features in the mix. Its intuitive layout and friendly graphics contribute to a smooth user experience, making it approachable for all users, including those new to cybersecurity.

In the end, more advanced users may prefer ESET’s clean layout and the depth of its settings, while their casual counterparts may find Avast more intuitive and straightforward.

ESET versus Avast: Protection

Ultimately, the effectiveness of every antivirus out there boils down to its threat-stopping capabilities. Based on the previously mentioned tests that also covered protection levels, ESET and Avast bring their A-game.

The former scored top marks in the ‘Protection’ (protection against malware and other attacks) and ‘Usability’ (false alarms and possible limitations in using the internet) categories during AV-Test trials, both for its macOS and Windows apps. Avast had the identical score on both platforms - a big reason why it is the best-performing antivirus in our list of the best antivirus software when it comes to malware-busting abilities.

Tests performed by AV-Comparatives for malware protection from March 2025 corroborate the narrative. Both antiviruses passed the test with flying colors, with Avast registering a 97.7% offline detection rate, 99.3% online detection rate, and 99.96% online protection rate.

ESET had negligibly lower percentages, with a 96.5% offline detection rate, 97.2% online detection rate, and 99.95% online protection rate. That being said, it had fewer false alarms at 6, compared to Avast’s 10.

ESET versus Avast: Pricing

ESET's pricing can be customized depending on your needs. For example, a single device license of ESET Home Security Essential for one year is $34.99, increasing by $3.50 with each extra device added. This tier includes ESET's excellent antivirus and privacy protection, including anti-phishing and Wi-Fi protection tools.

The second tier, Home Security Premium, costs $41.99 for a single device for one year, and also increases by $3.50 per device added. This tier includes all the goodies in the Essential tier, plus a password manager, file encryption, and additional threat-detection tools.

The final tier, Home Security Ultimate, comes as a 5 device license as standard, with the cost coming in at $125.99 for a single year. Each additional device is, you guessed it, $3.50. Along with all the previous inclusions in the Essential and Premium plans, you can add a VPN and identity protection to your basket of antivirus tools.

Avast One is a little bit kinder on the wallet. Avast offers a free ‘Basic’ tier which provides you with malware protection and security features on a single device, but it does impose a VPN data cap, and has no identity protection tools.

The first premium plan is Avast One Silver Individual, which gives you a three device license, removes the VPN limitations, and costs $35.88 per year. Avast One Gold Individual is the next tier up at $83.88, and supports five devices as well as unlocking the identity theft protection features.

If you really wanted to, you have the option to extend the protection to up to thirty devices using the ‘Family’ variants for both ‘Silver’ and ‘Gold Tiers’ of Avast One, priced at $59.88 and $113.88, respectively.

Note that these exact prices refer to the first year of use. Renewals will generally cost twice that.

ESET versus Avast: Which is best?

The decision to settle on either of the two AVs will largely depend on your priorities. The notable differences between ESET and Avast lie in their configurability, which ESET excels in, and in the beginner-friendly interface, which is where Avast has the edge.

Performance-wise, they’re pretty similar, exercising razor-sharp detection and protection, so you’ll be in good hands with either.

Investing in the best antivirus is a long-term commitment, and in a world where cyber threats are becoming more concerning with each passing day, you don’t want to make the wrong choice.

However, when choosing between two reputable antivirus solutions such as McAfee and Avast, it’s difficult to ascertain which one is better. First, both are effective in defending your devices against malware. Once you get down to the list of features and realize their offerings are similar in quite a lot of ways, it gets even harder to pick.

This is why it’s necessary to take a proverbial magnifying glass and look at the performance and features in much more detail.

McAfee versus Avast: Background

Created by John McAfee way back in 1987, McAfee Antivirus has consistently outperformed other offerings by the company and has grown to become one of the most trusted security products in the world – a label that has stuck to this very day.

Avast, on the other hand, began life only a year later in former Czechoslovakia. As a testament to this vendor’s quality, McAfee even licensed the Avast AV engine and tried to acquire the company at one point in the late 90s. Despite a slow adoption rate, Avast hit the mainstream after switching to a freemium model.

Today, both providers offer powerful premium (and a capable free-tier antivirus in Avast’s case) security suites that include additional tools aimed at improving users’ defenses against different types of cyber threats.

McAfee versus Avast: Security features

McAfee and Avast will greatly enhance your overall security, considering that both solutions are robust in terms of core malware defenses. Thus, details such as the features, their individual quality, and the price are the most logical deciding factors.

In addition to evaluating the detection rates and the resource usage, we’ll also go through the list of advanced features such as VPNs, firewalls, password managers, and other security bells and whistles that modern antivirus suites offer.

Real-time threat detection

Besides recognizing known threats by cross-checking programs with malware databases, McAfee employs sophisticated real-time threat detection that helps it spot new malware. Powered by machine learning, this function detects patterns and unique behaviors often found in new threats, which, of course, allows for proactive protection.

Similarly, Avast continuously monitors app behavior, scans files, and screens your online activities to recognize real-time threats. Plus, it blocks unknown remote connection requests and keeps an eye on your email address, notifying you if it pops up in a data breach.

McAfee has a small edge in this area due to its machine learning threat detection, but it comes at a price of false positives, as the algorithm has the tendency to target safe files.

Firewall

Because it shields devices from unauthorized access by continuously monitoring inbound and outbound connections, a firewall is an indispensable tool in every security suite.

McAfee has a solid one that works pretty well in blocking suspicious connections. Although it’s competent, more configuration options would have been nice, since McAfee only grants you the option to accept a blocked connection or block the ones that the firewall deems safe.

Whereas McAfee monitors outgoing connections but leaves inbound traffic to the native OS firewall, Avast’s firewall takes full control over firewall defenses, and by proxy, the cake in this segment. You can fine-tune the protection levels by introducing additional limitations or allowing more programs or connections through.

Identity theft protection

Opting for McAfee’s ‘Premium’ subscription provides you with a range of identity theft protection features, such as personal data scans and identity monitoring. If you require more punch, the ‘Ultimate’ plan hooks you up with a personal data cleanup service and powerful credit, bank, and credit card monitoring. Moreover, it gives you access to the security freeze feature, $25K in ransomware coverage, and if things go haywire, you may also receive up to $2M in identity theft coverage.

In comparison, Avast One’s ‘Gold’ subscription also provides identity protection features, which are slightly less comprehensive and feature credit monitoring, one-on-one assistance from identity specialists, and up to $1M in identity theft reimbursement.

VPN

VPN serves as a secure tunnel for your connection, enhancing your overall security by keeping your online activities safe from prying eyes.

McAfee’s VPN is available in all subscription tiers, and the good news is it doesn’t come with any data caps. When it comes to efficiency, McAfee offers a selection of over 9000 servers across 48 countries, alongside features like auto-connect, an on/off switch, split tunnelling, and a kill switch.

Avast includes a limited VPN (5GB data cap and just one location) even in its freebie Avast One subscription. Upgrading removes the data cap and provides access to 59 locations.

Many VPNs bundled in antivirus packages don't quite match up to the likes of dedicated services such as NordVPN or SurfShark. You may want to take a look at our guide to the best VPN, as many of the dedicated VPN services provide better coverage, locations, and deals.

Password manager

McAfee kindly incorporates its True Key Password Manager in all subscription tiers. While somewhat restrictive when stacked up against dedicated password managers, it packs a hefty punch by introducing various multi-factor authentication functions while also allowing you to import passwords from other password managers and different web browsers. However, it doesn’t support form filling or password sharing.

Avast One doesn’t come with a password manager. Shame, because it’s a puzzling limitation in an otherwise powerful package.

Parental controls

To sweeten the deal, McAfee throws in an amazing set of parental controls. These allow you to track which apps and websites your children are interacting with, monitor their screen time, and block different categories of content. If that wasn’t enough, by leveraging GPS, McAfee also enables you to keep track of your juniors’ geographic location, going as far as to send you a notification if a child leaves or visits a specific area.

Avast has no parental controls. You could invest in one of the best parental control apps, but the fact that other vendors such as Norton and Bitdefender have this functionality is a major letdown.

Extra features

McAfee and Avast have some extra tricks hiding under their sleeves that provide even more bang for your buck. For instance, both have a file shredder feature that erases your files permanently, eliminating the risk of a recovery job by a threat actor.

Avast partially redeems itself for the lack of parental controls by throwing in a collection of maintenance tools, such as PC Speedup, which allows you to optimize apps that are slowing down your system. There is also a useful driver updater and Avast’s Disk Cleaner, which gets rid of leftover files.

Whereas Avast is dead set on helping you handle leftover files on your PC, McAfee is more concerned with your unused online accounts (which can be a major security liability). As a result, the latter has a handy feature that finds and erases such accounts.

McAfee versus Avast: System performance

Though Avast’s lack of parental control and password manager functionalities helps McAfee come out ahead in the battle of features, it’s impossible to declare a winner without taking a closer look at the system performance.

According to recent April 2025 tests conducted by AV-Comparatives, McAfee and Avast are actually at the forefront of lightweight antivirus solutions. In other words, their impact on your system will be minimal, regardless of the antivirus you go with.

During the test, McAfee snagged an impact score of 2.6 (lower impact score means the AV is faster), making it the most resource-friendly antivirus in the world. Avast came in second with 3.8, which is more than impressive since solutions noted for being lightweight, like Bitdefender, had a score of 25.

While McAfee takes the gold by a hair in system performance, if you prefer Avast, you likely won’t notice much of a difference, as both are super fast.

McAfee versus Avast: Ease of use

When your security is at stake, you really don’t want to struggle with your AV suite and waste time searching for critical features. Fortunately, both Avast and McAfee are top of the crop in regards to design and user experience.

With McAfee, the interface is sleek, modern, and most importantly, well-organized. It doesn’t matter what function you’re trying to reach since you’ll do it in a few clicks, as the entire tool set is available on the left sidebar. Kudos to the designers for also adding shortcut tiles for the big functions, thus making the app a joy to use.

Avast was intuitive from its inception, and nothing has changed here, save for an artistic update in the Avast One suite, which now opts for a more cartoonish look. All the pressing matters are on the ‘Home’ screen, which ensures nothing important ever escapes your attention. The ‘Explore’ menu is located on the left sidebar, allowing you to run scans and access more advanced features.

While the more user-friendly approach is a good thing as it makes software much more palatable for the masses (most of whom aren’t technically inclined), some security aficionados may find both interfaces too simplistic for their liking.

McAfee versus Avast: Protection

Accessories like VPNs and parental controls are important pieces of the cybersecurity puzzle, yet, the antivirus lives and dies by how good its protection is.

Avast is slightly more effective here, but you’ll be happy to learn (or disappointed if you’re still unable to pick a vendor) that both solutions work admirably. Look no further than malware protection tests by the AV-Comparatives lab from March 2025.

Let’s start with McAfee.

Testing shows that its detection rates are top-notch, scoring a 99.6% online detection rate and a near-perfect 99.96% online protection rate. However, McAfee seems to be struggling when it comes to offline detection, scoring a 79.3% in this area.

It’s also worth mentioning that McAfee doesn’t fare well with false positives. The very same tests reveal it raised 15 false alarms, which is quite a lot. While it’s easy to assume that it’s better to be safe than sorry, McAfee’s trigger-happy temperament will only confuse and annoy you.

Avast, in contrast, had a 99.3% online detection rate (a tiny bit lower than its counterpart) and the exact same online protection rate (99.96%), but it swept the floor with McAfee in terms of offline detection rate, logging a high 97.7%. Avast was also slightly more precise, as only 10 false alarms were raised during these tests.

McAfee versus Avast: Pricing

McAfee may be more comprehensive feature-wise, which naturally reflects in its price. The ‘Basic’ plan has limited features and covers one device at a price of $29.99 per year. From there, the ‘Essential’ subscription can be used on up to five devices and costs $35.99. The most economical plan is McAfee+ Premium, which supports unlimited devices and comes in at $44.99.

From there, you also get the choice of McAfee+ Advanced ($80.99) and McAfee+ Ultimate, which offers a complete security package but is priced at $199.99 per year.

Avast One is much more economical. For instance, even the free ‘Basic’ tier is super powerful regarding malware protection and security features, even though it’s limited to one device, imposes a VPN data cap, and has no identity protection features.

The first premium plan is Avast One Silver Individual, which extends the support to three devices and eliminates VPN limitations, and costs $35.88 per year. The next upgrade is Avast One Gold Individual, which is $83.88, supports five devices, and unlocks the identity protection features.

To extend the protection to up to thirty devices, there’s the option of ‘Family’ variants for both ‘Silver’ and ‘Gold Tiers’, priced at $59.88 and $113.88, respectively.

Note that these exact prices refer to the first year of use. Renewals will generally cost twice that.

McAfee versus Avast: Which is best?

It may be underwhelming, but the choice of an antivirus (at least when picking between two great vendors) is ultimately down to personal preferences.

In fact, the free Avast may be enough if you don’t require too many security tools. However, if you’re interested in significantly enhancing your defenses and investing in sophisticated identity protection, you may be better off with McAfee’s higher-priced subscriptions.

Either way, both excel in malware protection, so you’ll be in good hands with either of them.

• Avast Scam Guardian uses AI to flag suspicious messages, emails, and websites in real time
• Avast Scam Guardian Pro will also soon offer extra protections like scam call and SMS detection
• Online shopping, investment, and phishing scams are the most reported scam types in recent months

Avast has introduced a new scam protection feature, promising real-time defense against the rise of phishing, online fraud, and AI-assisted deception

Avast Scam Guardian, integrated into the company's existing free antivirus platform, looks to address what Avast describes as an “increasingly sophisticated threat landscape.”

Avast Scam Guardian is designed to detect scam attempts across various digital channels, including websites, messages, and emails, using AI to analyze patterns in content and user interaction, flagging suspicious activity in real time.

A response to alarming scam trends

A paid version, Scam Guardian Pro, is expected later this year, promising additional layers of protection, including AI-powered defenses against scam calls and text messages.

To use Avast Scam Guardian, users simply need to install or update to the latest version of Avast Free Antivirus, where the tool is now integrated.

Once installed, Scam Guardian operates in the background, scanning websites, emails, and messages for known scam patterns and suspicious behavior using AI models trained on real-world threats.

The system will alert users in real time if it detects a potential scam. The free version does not require any special setup and is active by default.

The timing of this release corresponds with alarming figures from Avast’s Q1/2025 Threat Report, which claims breached personal records surged by 186% in the first quarter alone, while phishing scams rose by an even more dramatic 466% compared to the previous quarter.

In the UK, nearly one in three adults has been targeted by a scam in 2025 so far, with online shopping scams accounting for the largest share of victims, followed by investment schemes and phishing attacks.

The idea of using AI to fight scams isn’t new; scammers themselves have been using generative tools to write convincing messages and build fraudulent websites.

Avast claims its system is “leveling the playing field” by giving users the ability to counter these threats with their own AI defenses.

To evaluate overall protection, consumers may still need to compare products with the best antivirus and ransomware protection software.

In addition, since many scams try to steal personal information and financial credentials, identity theft protection services remain crucial in addition to any antivirus program.

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• Thousands of PCs, phones and tablets stolen and lost by UK public sector bodies prompting fears of huge national security risk

• Digital scams are now perceived as just as much of a threat as other crimes
• Avast survey claims 1 in 3 Brits have fallen victim to online scams
• Phishing has seen a 466% rise quarter-on-quarter

If you think digital scams are on the rise, you’re not alone - a new survey from Avast and Neighbourhood Watch has revealed 92% of Brits believe that cybercrime is as much of a threat as other types of crime.

Just over one in three respondents say they have been personally victimised by cybercriminals, and many of these have suffered financial loss at the hands of digital scammers.

In particular, phishing scams are on the rise, with a 466% rise quarter-on-quarter. The rise in phishing scams is largely attributed to AI, with criminals leveraging AI tools in order to send more frequent and more sophisticated social engineering attacks. With AI, it takes fraudsters just a few minutes to craft campaigns that would have previously taken days.

More financial loss

Unsurprisingly, Brits are losing more money too, with 59% of victims losing up to £500. Women more commonly lose under £500, and men are more likely to suffer higher losses (between £501 and £2000, and £2000+).

“As cybercriminals use increasingly sophisticated tactics, staying vigilant online is no longer optional - especially as scams are becoming harder to spot and now lurking around every digital corner,” said Luis Corrons, Security Evangelist for Avast.

To protect yourself from cyberattacks, especially engineering attacks, the key is staying vigilant. Make sure to thoroughly check any unsuspected communications, especially emails or texts that include a call to action (i.e. ‘change your password now’).

Be very wary of anyone claiming to be a family member or friend, especially given the developments in deep-fake technologies. Voice and images can be cloned or faked, so don’t send money to anyone you aren’t 100% sure is real.

Particularly important is to remember to never click any links or attachments that you don’t trust, and if you need recommendations on how to create a secure password, we’ve listed some of our top tips here.

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Whenever you’re at a computer or browsing the internet, you should be aware of the dangers lurking online that may compromise your device. Scammers, cybercriminals and viruses are ever prevalent in this digital age, and the risks of a dodgy file being downloaded onto your computer or a malicious website posing as a legitimate one have never been more real. To help keep yourself safe, one of the best things you can do is install reliable antivirus software – and right now, the security experts at Avast have made doing so incredibly affordable by slashing the cost of their leading suites by up to 60%.

Avast is a leader in the antivirus world. We think quite highly of the company’s antivirus packages, ranking the brand in the top three on our list of the best antivirus software packages. By running a reliable antivirus suite like Avast Premium or Avast Ultimate and practicing good cybersecurity hygiene (for example, by updating your system regularly and scanning for viruses often), you can help ensure you have the best protection online.

From now until April 7, 2025, you can pick up a subscription to Avast Premium or Ultimate with a 60% discount off the RRP for the first year. That discounted price will switch back to the regular price once the year is through. Both options are compatible with PC, Mac, iOS and Android platforms, so they’re worth considering no matter what your day-to-day devices might be.

Avast is a TechRadar preferred partner (What does that mean?)

In our Avast One review (a plan offered by Avast with similar features to these discounted options) we praised the software for its near-perfect malware protection and noted that device slowdown wasn’t noticeable at all, making it a particularly great option for gamers.

• AI continues to play a dual role in cybersecurity
• Lumma Stealer rises 1154%, marking a new malware peak
• Outdated systems remain vulnerable to ransomware

In its recent Q3 2024 Threat Report, Gen highlights alarming trends that reveal the rising complexity of cyber threats, highlighting that as cybercriminals refine their methods, the dual role of AI becomes evident.

While AI can be weaponized to enhance attacks by proliferating realistic deepfakes and highly convincing phishing campaigns, AI tools also serve as a crucial defense mechanism.

With cyber threats becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect, awareness and proactive measures are essential for safeguarding sensitive information.

Social engineering tactics take center stage

Cybercriminals increasingly use social engineering tactics to deceive millions into compromising their security. Quarter-over-quarter, there has been a 614% rise in “Scam-Yourself Attacks” which use psychological manipulation to trick individuals into unintentionally installing malware on their own devices.

Attackers will use fake tutorials shared on popular platforms like YouTube that claim to provide free access to paid software, enticing users to follow the instructions. However, the victims inadvertently download malicious programs instead.

Another tactic, known as ClickFix Scams, deceives victims by presenting fake technical solutions and then instructing users to copy and paste malicious code into their command prompts, unknowingly granting attackers control of their systems.

Similarly, fake CAPTCHA prompts have emerged disguised as standard verification steps, prompting users to paste harmful code into their systems. Fake updates that present themselves as essential software updates are being sent to users loaded with malware disguised to gain administrative privileges once installed.

Data-stealing malware and ransomware has seen an uptick with information stealers rising by 39%. The Lumma Stealer for example increased its activity by 1154%.

Ransomware attacks also surged, with a 100% increase in risk ratio, with the Magniber ransomware leading these attacks by exploiting unpatched software to gain access. Outdated systems, such as Windows 7, remain particularly vulnerable, however Gen has worked with governments to release free decryption tools like the Avast Mallox Ransomware Decryptor.

Mobile devices also suffered rises in data-stealing malware attacks, which grew by 166% during Q3/2024. A new spyware strain, NGate, emerged, capable of cloning bank card data to withdraw money or conduct unauthorized transactions. Meanwhile, banking malware, such as Rocinante, increased by 60%, with new strains like TrickMo and Octo2 surfacing.

In terms of delivery, malicious SMS messages remain the primary delivery method. Telemetry from Norton Genie shows that smishing (malicious SMS scams) accounts for 16.5% of observed attacks, followed by lottery scams (12%) and phishing emails/texts (9.6%).

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We increasingly live our lives through our digital devices, and the privacy and cybersecurity threats we face are growing increasingly sophisticated. It’s no longer enough to just be careful online, and everything from targeted exploits to data leaks mean you can be at risk even if you don’t make a mistake.

Cybersecurity is a big focus here at TechRadar, and we’re continuously testing today’s software security suites to see which work best at helping give you an extra layer of protection. Avast offers some of the most affordable security suites available, and two of its most popular options rate highly in our guides to the best malware removal and the best antivirus software.

Avast Free Antivirus helps give comprehensive protection against viruses, spyware and other threats, and it earned a respectable 4 stars in our review. Then there’s Avast One – a simple to use, yet powerful all-in-one solution with an extra focus on privacy – also scoring 4 stars in our review. Importantly, both are available for Windows and macOS, plus Apple and Android phones.

We love that Avast makes its entry-level antivirus software available for free, but the company also offers a range of affordable paid options that include extra features and deeper levels of protection. Now, making the move to better security can be a little daunting at first, and the extra peace of mind does come with a price – especially if you need to protect a large range of devices across your whole family.

To help make the decision to upgrade a little easier, Avast has gotten into the Black Friday sales period and is offering up some huge discounts on Avast Antivirus and Avast One. From November 26 to December 8, you can get up to a whopping 80% off a yearly subscription, with options to suit a single device, or coverage for up to thirty.

We’ve highlighted some of our favourite deals below, but don’t forget to check out the Avast store for all the company’s Black Friday offers.

The big discounts on offer here are a great opportunity to test out two of the top premium protection options (as attested to by our guides and reviews mentioned above), at a very affordable price. Giving Avast a try also comes with less risk as the company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on eligible purchases.

Avast is a TechRadar preferred partner (What does this mean?)

• Researchers spot new campaign that can turn off antivirus protection
• Malware uses legitimate Avast Anti-Rootkit driver to access kernel level
• Once antivirus is deactivated, the malware can proceed without detection

Hackers are using a legitimate Avast Anti-Rootkit driver to disguise their malware, turn off antivirus protection, and infect systems, experts have warned.

The vulnerable driver has been exploited in a number of attacks since 2021, with the original vulnerabilities being present since at least 2016, research by Trellix, has claimed, noting the malware can use the vulnerable driver to end the processes of security software at the kernel level.

The malware in question belongs to the AV Killer family, with the attack using a vector known as bring-your-own-vulnerable-driver (BYOVD) to infect the system.

Virus can turn off antivirus

Trellix outlined how the malware uses a file named ‘kill-floor.exe’ to place the vulnerable driver named ‘ntfs.bin’ into the default Windows user folder, before using the Service Control executable (sc.exe) to register the driver using the ‘aswArPot.sys’ service.

Included within the malware is a hardcoded list of 142 processes used by common security products, which is used to check system process snapshots for any matches.

The malware then uses the ‘DeviceIoControl’ API to run the relevant commands to end the process, thereby preventing the antivirus from detecting the malware.

The hardcoded list includes processes belonging to a number of security products from names such as McAfee, Avast, Microsoft Defender, BlackBerry, Sophos, and many more.

As BleepingComputer points out, this isn’t the first time a BYOVD attack has exploited a vulnerable Avast driver, with the 2021 Avoslocker ransomware attacks abusing an Avast Anti-Rookit driver. Sentinel Labs also spotted and reported two high-severity flaws to Avast in the same year, which were patched shortly after.

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Avast One Essential is the free starter product in its Avast One range, a powerful set of security suites with an excellent antivirus and an array of bonus security layers.

Avast’s strong core protection engines block access to phishing and other malicious websites, for instance. Downloads and incoming emails are scanned for threats, ransomware protection shields files in your most sensitive folders, and a firewall helps to control which processes can access the web and which can’t.

That already beats some of the competition (Avira Free Security doesn’t include full system-wide web protection), but Avast One Essential is just getting started. A free VPN may not allow you to change location, but it includes a very generous 5GB data a week (Avira’s free VPN offers 500MB a month); and there are tools to scan your network, find missing app updates, identify Windows security holes, tweak your privacy settings, and a whole lot more.

Looking for antivirus software only? Avast Free Antivirus has the same leading-edge protection engines, but far fewer extras, and may be a better choice. But if you like the sound of a free antivirus with more features than many paid security suites, Avast One Essential is well worth a closer look.

Avast One Essential: Getting started

Some companies (hi, Bitdefender) offer free security but demand you ‘create an account’ first, which involves handing over your email address and maybe other personal details. Avast and Avira are exceptions; both companies recommend that you register your email address with them, but that isn’t necessary, and you can install and use the software entirely for free.

(That’s not just a theoretical privacy point; it has practical benefits, too. Bitdefender doesn’t allow you to use its free app on more than three devices per account. As Avast doesn’t know who you are, you can install its software on as many Windows, Mac, Android or iOS devices as you need.)

It’s important to pay attention when installing Avast One on Windows. If you accept all the defaults, it also installs Avast’s secure browser and makes it your system default. That’s such a major change that we would prefer Avast to use an opt-in system, where the browser isn’t installed unless you specifically ask for it. Still, it’s clearly highlighted during setup, and as long as you read each installation screen, you’ll be able to turn down the browser with a single click.

Avast One’s installer does have one very unusual plus: you can set Avast to Passive Mode, which installs the scanner but not real-time protection. The advantage of that approach is you can run Avast One alongside another antivirus without conflicts, use the other antivirus to detect threats in real-time, but run Avast One’s scanner on a schedule or on demand for extra safety. That’s not necessary for most users, but could be a welcome extra touch if you’re looking for the maximum antivirus protection.

Avast One Essential: Interface

Once the Avast One App launched, it displayed six tiles covering its various functions. We could run a Smart antivirus scan or connect to the VPN with a click, clean our browsing history or our full hard drive, update drivers or optimize system performance. It’s a little cluttered, but we quickly found our way around.

Avast One mostly does its antivirus work in the background, without you noticing, but there’s one exception. If you run a file it’s not seen before, Avast stops it and spends up to 60 seconds scanning the file for threats. If you regularly download open source or other small tools, then this might happen a lot, and it can become very annoying. But it is good for security, and if it gets too much, you can always turn the feature off.

An Explore menu has individual options covering Avast’s various antivirus, privacy and performance features. It’s good to see these clearly highlight features which aren’t available in the free edition; there’s nothing more annoying than repeatedly choosing some exciting-looking option, only to get the same old screen saying ‘nope, sorry, can’t have that unless you pay.’

Overall, Avast One Essential looks good and is reasonably easy to use for simple tasks, but poor organization of features caught us out occasionally. Avast One has the ability to exclude items from scans, for instance, but instead of making this available from the Scan Center, Avast hides it away in a Settings menu in the Account area. If you like Avast but don’t need Avast One’s lengthy feature list, Avast Free Antivirus gives you the same protection engines in a modern, simpler and more straightforward interface.

Avast One Essential: Protection

We track the performance of all the top antivirus apps as reported by independent testing labs including AV-Comparatives, AV-Test, MRG Effitas and SE Labs. Most providers submit their full-featured paid versions for testing, but Avast sends its free edition, which shows a lot of confidence in its power.

That confidence seems fully justified, too. We keep an aggregate score of antivirus performance across nine major tests, and currently Avast is equal first with Bitdefender and McAfee. (ESET, F-Secure and Norton are equal fourth, and Avira follows in seventh place.)

Lab results are important, but we’re always keen to run further tests of our own. We began by attempting to access 50 of the latest phishing URLs, as collected by experts OpenPhish. Avast did a good job, blocking 86% immediately. Avira Security Free scored a little better in recent tests with a 90% protection rate, but that was with a browser extension only. Avast One is better overall because it has system-wide browsing protection which covers every browser and app on your device. (And even if you prefer Avira’s browser extension, there’s nothing to stop you using it alongside Avast One.)

We switched to our malware test, and tried to download a series of very dangerous files from 50 brand new links. Avira Free scored a 90% protection rate in its last test, but this time Avast One won out by blocking 94% of threats either at the URL level, or when the files hit our hard drive. (We didn’t test further but Avast’s full protection rate will be even higher because even if malware isn’t detected on download, Avast’s behavior monitoring detects most new threats by their actions.)

Avast One Essential: VPN

Avast One Essential includes a free edition of Avast’s free VPN. This automatically connects you to the nearest server and doesn’t allow you to change location, which means you can’t use it to unblock streaming content in other countries. It has a data limit, too, but that’s exceptionally generous at 5GB a week; for comparison, Avira’s free VPN gives you only 500MB a month.

There is one particularly disappointing restriction: Avast’s free VPN doesn’t give you access to any settings, including its kill switch. If the VPN drops while you’re using it, that means your identity and traffic may be exposed to snoopers.

Although this makes the app a poor privacy choice for really sensitive situations, it still has some value for the most basic tasks. If you just want to spend five minutes on not-especially-sensitive private browsing via public Wi-Fi, for instance, you’re safer using Avast One Essentials than no VPN at all.

Avast Free VPN speeds were a little below par at a peak of 190Mbps and average of 92Mbps (NordVPN and Surfshark typically reach 900Mbps and more.) That’s better than many free VPN’s we’ve tried, though, and more than enough for browsing, streaming and other basic tasks.

Avast One Essential: Other features

Avast One Essential has many extra features, and we’ll quickly run through those here. But if you’re looking for more detail, or you’d like to know what extra features are available in the paid products, our Avast One Gold review has an in-depth look.

Avast One Essential includes a simple firewall to control which apps can go online, but the free edition doesn’t do much more than the standard Windows firewall (there’s more power available with the paid products.)

Avast One’s Network Inspector is more interesting, with options to check your network for vulnerabilities, and run a full network scan. This can identify the devices connected to your home network, for instance, and raise an alert if a new device connects that it hasn’t seen before.

Avast’s Ransomware Protection adds an extra layer of security which prevents files in key folders from being modified by untrusted apps. This might be useful, but it’s not exactly original, and Windows Controlled Folder Access allows you to do something similar without installing any extra apps.

A clever PC Speedup tool aims to speed up your PC by ensuring background processes use less resources. This looks good in theory, but might target important apps which really do need those resources (Avast wanted to access OneDrive and our BackBlaze backup app, for instance.) We wouldn’t recommend using this unless you’ve the expertise to monitor the results and fine-tune any settings, if necessary.

The Software Updater highlights missing updates for 50 popular applications. That might be handy, but the free version only warns you about updates: it can’t install them for you. As most of these apps automatically update themselves anyway, there may not be much value here.

A Clear Browsing Data tool frees up space by wiping away your Chrome or Edge browsing history. It’s a little better than doing this from the browser because you can opt to delete only tracking cookies, while keeping the browsing cookies, ensuring you’re more likely to stay logged in when returning to your favorite sites.

Dark Web Monitoring raises the alert if your email address appears in a data breach, and the Privacy Advisor has simple guides to improving your privacy settings in top apps and social media websites. These do make it easier for beginners to enhance their online privacy, but if you’ve more web and security experience, you could find much more information with just one or two web searches.

Avast One Essential: What’s not included?

There’s a lot to like about Avast One Essential, but also plenty of reasons to upgrade.

Avast One Silver enhances many free features, giving you an unlimited VPN, scanning of web email as well as local email messages, a full-featured firewall and automatic installation of missing software updates.

New features include anti-tracking, a secure bank mode, extra protection against webcam hijacking, secure DNS to keep you safe from fake websites, automatic driver updates and assorted other speed-boosting tools.

These extras aren’t always as useful as they sound, but if you need the VPN in particular, Avast One could be very useful. Read our Avast One Gold review to find out more.

Avast One Essential: Final verdict

Avast One Essential delivers better antivirus protection than most paid products at zero cost. If you’re looking for an accurate and configurable antivirus, and can use the VPN and its many other tools, then this is a great free pick. But if you’re not interested in the extras then Avast Free Antivirus might be better. It’s less configurable but has exactly the same protection and is easier to use.

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If you’re looking for an effective malware-hunting companion, Avast Free Antivirus might not sound very promising. It’s the most basic product in the Avast range, a cut-down version of its free Avast One Essential security suite with most of the privacy tools stripped out; you’ll surely need more than that, won’t you?

Well, maybe not. AV-Comparatives is an independent lab that regularly runs in-depth tests of all the best antivirus software. Most vendors submit their full-featured paid security suites to be sure they get good results, but Avast sends this edition, Avast Free Antivirus. That shows huge confidence, but it’s easy to see why: this app, its most basic free version, regularly wipes the floor with almost all the paid competition.

Protection rates aren’t the only factor in choosing an antivirus, but they’re a very good start. Keep reading and we’ll dig into the detail, run our own tests, and find out more about whether Avast Free Antivirus could be the right malware hunter for you.

Avast Free Antivirus: Features

Avast Free Antivirus can’t quite match the likes of Avira Free Security in the length of its feature list, but there’s a very good reason for that: it’s focused almost entirely on core antivirus functionality, and doesn’t waste your time with bonus extras you may never use.

Avast Free doesn’t have a VPN or a password manager, for instance, unlike Avira Free Security. But Avira’s free VPN is horribly limited, with a 500MB data limit a month and no ability to change location, and although its password works, it’s extremely basic and no match for market leaders like Dashlane.

Avast Free does have a few bonus tools. The Network Inspector checks your network for vulnerabilities and finds all its connected devices; the Software Updater looks out for missing security patches, and Avast's Ransomware Shield prevents untrusted apps from modifying files. 

Where Avast Free wins out, though, is with its core protection engines. It has full system-wide web protection to block phishing and other malicious websites, for instance; Avira doesn’t include full web protection in the free edition (the best you can do is install extensions for specific browsers.)

Avast Free Antivirus: Getting Started

If you’re the type of person who runs an app installer and accepts every default setting, then Avast Free Antivirus could cause you a problem. It also installs Avast Secure Browser and sets it as your default browser unless you notice the warning (in suspiciously tiny print) and clear the checkboxes. We’ve no problem with a provider offering extras like this, but they shouldn’t be installed unless you specifically select them.

The Avast Free Antivirus app looks great. The screens are a subdued gray and white, but they’re brought to life with eye-catching splashes of green and orange. Icons are large, and you’re never left wondering what they mean because they all have a text caption. And with animations everywhere - panels moving in from the left, highlights fading up and down as you move the mouse cursor over them - the app feels more like a polished modern website than the usual dull static Windows app.

There are neat usability touches everywhere. Many free apps don’t highlight which functions you can use and which you can’t, so you’re regularly choosing an option and getting a ‘CAN’T DO THAT UNLESS YOU PAY!!’ screen. Avast makes it instantly clear with an icon at the top right of each button: a padlock means you can’t use it, a down arrow means you can use it but there’s something to install first, and no icon means it’s all yours. 

When you click any option for the first time, Avast displays a help page quickly and clearly explaining what the feature does and how to use it. It’s another neat touch which avoids confusion and helps you feel at home right away.

Avast Free Antivirus: Protection

We track the performance of all the top antivirus apps as reported by independent testing labs including AV-Comparatives, AV-Test, MRG Effitas and SE Labs. Most providers submit their full-featured paid versions for testing, but Avast sends its free edition, which shows a lot of confidence in its power.

That confidence seems fully justified, too. We keep an aggregate score of antivirus performance across nine major tests, and currently Avast Free Antivirus is equal first with Bitdefender and McAfee. (ESET, F-Secure and Norton are equal fourth, and Avira follows in seventh place.)

Lab results are important, but we’re always keen to run further tests of our own. We began by attempting to access 50 of the latest phishing URLs, as collected by experts at OpenPhish. Avast did a good job, blocking 86% immediately. Bitdefender Antivirus Free was relatively disappointing at 64%. Avira Security Free scored a little better in recent tests with a 90% protection rate, but that was with a browser extension only. Avast Free wins overall because it has system-wide browsing protection which protects every browser and app on your device.

We switched to our malware test, and tried to download some very dangerous files from 50 brand new links. Avast Free did an excellent job, blocking 94% of threats either at the URL level, or when the files hit our hard drive. That couldn’t match Bitdefender Antivirus Free, which blocked 100% of our test threats, but was just ahead of Avira Free’s 90%.

These results can vary significantly depending on the files and links we use, but, on balance, we think they match the independent lab reports: Avast and Bitdefender Free are too closely matched to call, and Avira is just a fraction behind.

Avast Free Antivirus: Comprehensive Antivirus

Avast Free Antivirus automatically monitors your device to detect malicious files as they appear, but if you want to run a manual check, it has more scan types than anyone else, even paid products.

The Smart Scan runs a quick antivirus scan in under a minute, for instance, and also looks for poorly configured system settings which might compromise your security. Bitdefender’s Vulnerability Scan tries to do something similar, but we found Avast spotted more relevant issues and gave better advice.

The catch? Smart Scan also checks for a bunch of performance and other issues which can’t be fixed with the free version, and repeatedly prompts you to upgrade to fix them all (it took us an extra four clicks to get rid of the upselling attempts and return to the dashboard.) It’s a little annoying, and more pushy than most of the competition, but no surprise: you’re getting leading-edge antivirus for free, of course Avast is going to try to sell you an upgrade. 

If you’re looking for something more thorough, the Full System Scan checks your entire device for threats. This can take a very time, perhaps hours, but Avast Scans are faster the second time around.

That’s good, but it’s only the beginning. Avast Free can also run custom scans of whatever files, folders or drives you need, either from the app or the Explorer right-click menu. A Boot-Time scan can remove stealthy threats by checking your system before Windows loads. If that doesn’t work, Avast Free can even create a bootable USB key to scan your device without Windows running, helping catch stealthy threats that you couldn’t remove otherwise. Bitdefender Antivirus Free isn’t nearly as generous, leaving its own Rescue Environment and all but the most essential scan types for paying customers only.

While everyone likes free extras, we much prefer the Avast Free focus on its core antivirus protection. You probably don’t need a horribly limited VPN, but we’ll bet you do need comprehensive malware protection, and that’s where Avast Free Antivirus excels.

Avast Free antivirus: Final verdict

Most top free antivirus apps leave out at least some key features to try and persuade you to upgrade (Avira Free leaves out web protection, Bitdefender Free drops most of its advanced scap types), but not Avast Free Antivirus. It has all the real-time and web filtering technologies you need, and they block more malware than just about anyone else.

If you’re looking for more functionality, though, don’t rule out Avast One Essential. It has the same excellent protection, and includes extras like a free VPN. (Sure, it’s a very limited VPN - no kill switch, can’t change location - but with 5GB of free data a week, it might work for basic browsing.)

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Security breaches wreak havoc, not just for businesses, but for their customers. So far in 2024, around 20 major breaches have already occurred, all attributed to cyber attacks. Hitting major businesses, healthcare, and infrastructure across North America, Europe, and Japan, these cyber attacks have incredible reach. 

What country is the biggest cybersecurity threat? 

Cyber attacks don’t just have a target. The origin of the attacks is also significant. Data breaches and denial of service attacks are launched from some of the world’s most powerful countries. 

Research from CyberProof demonstrates that 10 countries originated the most cyber attacks in 2021:

• China: 18.83%
• United States: 17.05%
• Brazil: 5.63%
• India: 5.33%
• Germany: 5.10%
• Vietnam: 4.23%
• Thailand: 2.51%
• Russia: 2.46%
• Indonesia: 2.41%

Based on this data, China is the biggest cybersecurity threat. The assumption is that the USA’s place on the list is due to organized crime on American soil. However, IP obfuscation cannot be ruled out – it is possible the figure for China could in reality be higher. 

More recent research (2024) from Oxford University has been compiled into a Cybercrime Index. This uses a World Cybercrime Index (WCI) score, and reveals a top 10 of:

• Russia: 58.39
• Ukraine: 36.44
• China: 27.86
• United States: 25.01
• Nigeria: 21.28
• Romania: 14.83
• North Korea: 10.61
• United Kingdom: 9.01
• Brazil: 8.93
• India: 6.13

(The WCI figure is a threat level based on research from cybercrime experts.)

While it would be difficult to establish any direct correlation between these figures, China dominates as the prime cybersecurity threat.

What are the main causes of data breaches? 

When private data is observed by a third party, it can be designated as a breach. Small breaches can usually be easily dealt with. Larger breaches that make headlines are another matter. 

Data breaches typically rely on:

• Lost or stolen devices
• Insider with malicious intent
• Hackers employing cyber attack vectors

Based on the events of 2024 so far, the majority of data breaches are the result of cyber attacks. Stolen devices and insider activity may play a role, but breaches are almost always remotely coordinated.

All businesses and organizations should ensure:

• All devices are correctly managed
• Colleague access is routinely monitored
• Security software and operating systems are regularly updated

The best examples of 2024’s cyber attacks and data breaches will illustrate why.

1. UnitedHealth’s $872 Million Cyberattack 

Be in no doubt that ransomware continues to be a massive problem. A Q1 financial report from UnitedHealth Group in April 2024 revealed a massive $872 million loss attributable to ransomware.

The report states: "Cash flows from operations from the first quarter 2024 were $1.1 billion and were affected by approximately $3 billion due to the company's cyberattack response actions, including funding acceleration to care providers, and were additionally impacted due to the timing of public sector cash receipts."

UnitedHealth’s ChangeHealthcare platform was impacted by the attack. This payment platform handles transactions between doctors, pharmacies, and healthcare professionals across the USA. The attack resulted in the ChangeHealthcare platform being suspended, with the BlackCat/ALPHV group claiming it stole 6 TB of data.

The attack is currently believed to have been executed via a vulnerable Citrix portal.

At a federal hearing in May 2024, UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty estimated one-third of Americans had been affected by the attack. 

2. IMF

No one is safe from cyberattacks, not even the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has 190 member countries and works to improve growth and prosperity around the world. 

The organization has 2,400 employees, and in February 2024 it announced that 11 email accounts had been compromised. This discovery was made during investigations into a cyber incident. While there is no indication of any financial attack or loss, the official line is interesting. 

Microsoft Office 365 accounts were targeted by a Russia-linked intelligence organization in January 2024. However, the IMF has stated that the “incident does not appear to be part of Microsoft targeting." 

All of which suggests a targeted attack on individuals at the IMF. 

(The IMF was also the target of a hacking incident in 2011, as reported by the New York Times.)

3. England and Wales Cricket Board Coaching Platform 

Grassroots sport is an unlikely target for hackers. But wherever there is data, so there is potential profit. In March 2024, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) reported that a cyber attack affected 40,000 people.

The icoachcricket platform was the target, an online coaching tool hosted and run by a third party. 

It was later established that the IntelBroker criminal operation was the likely culprit. Leaked data was uploaded to the BreachedForums, and comprises data of icoachcricket users who registered between 2014 and 2021. Email addresses, hashed passwords, backup password information, and other registration details are in the leaked database. Some accounts claim that details of significant ECB personnel are included in the breach, along with those coaching children. 

4. Cannes Hospital 

Healthcare providers are increasingly targets of cybercrime. On April 16, 2024, staff at the Hospital Simone Veil in Cannes reverted to pen and paper following a cyberattack.

As a major hospital in the region, Simone Veil handles 150,000 outpatient appointments and 50,000 emergencies a year. While the majority of services were able to continue, communication and data handling were limited to legacy methods. 

While initially suspected to be a ransomware attack, several weeks passed before clarification was issued. On April 30, the hospital confirmed the LockBit 3.0 ransomware group was attempting to extort the establishment. 

However, Hospital Simone Veil has refused to pay, stating:

“In the event of a data release potentially belonging to the hospital, we will communicate to our patients and stakeholders, after a detailed review of the files that may have been exfiltrated, about the nature of the stolen information.”

It appears attempts are being made to decrypt the targeted data.

5. Cencora 

Corporate IT systems at Cencora (formerly AmerisourceBergen) were targeted according to an SEC filing (Securities and Exchange Commission) on February 21, 2024. Cencora is a pharmaceutical services company, providing distribution services for healthcare operations.

“[...]data from its information systems had been exfiltrated, some of which may contain personal information. As of the date of this filing, the incident has not had a material impact on the Company’s operations, and its information systems continue to be operational. The Company has not yet determined whether the incident is reasonably likely to materially impact the Company’s financial condition or results of operations.”

Cencora states that it took steps to contain the attack, with an investigation launched with law enforcement and cybersecurity experts. No information has yet been released confirming a ransomware incident. Similarly, the stolen data does not yet seem to have been leaked.

Significantly, Cencora has stated that it doesn’t believe the attack is related to the UnitedHealth Group attack. It seems multiple actors are targeting the healthcare sector.

6. Spoutible 

Twitter alternative Spoutible was launched in February 2023 with over 150,000 users and various security issues. By June 2023, the user count was around 240,000 users as the service launched Android and iOS apps.

Security researcher Troy Hunt was contacted in January 2024 with information concerning an API exploit, which he then investigated. The simple exploit, which involved using an API URL and adding a Spoutible username to return account information, apparently affected 207,000 records. 

Along with email address and profile information, the API hack enabled the retrieval of bcrypt hashed passwords. As Hunt explains: “I cannot think of any reason ever to return any user's hashed password to any interface […] There is never a good reason to do this. And even though bcrypt is the accepted algorithm of choice for storing passwords these days, it's far from uncrackable”

Spoutible CEO Christopher Bouzy has apologized and referred the breach to the FBI.

7. Tangerine Telecom  

Australian ISP Tangerine was breached on February 18, 2024, with over 200,000 records stolen by hackers. Full personal information (names, date of birth, phone numbers, and email addresses) was taken; bank and password details were not.

This doesn’t seem to be the usual external cyberattack attempt, however. Instead, it seems to have been traced to either a known individual or someone with their credentials. “We know that the unauthorized disclosure relates to a legacy customer database and has been traced back to the login credentials of a single user engaged by Tangerine on a contract basis.”

Tangerine has informed the relevant authorities of the breach, along with all of the affected customers. It seems likely that leaked emails will be targeted by phishing operations.

8. Trello

Online project management and collaboration tool Trello was targeted in January 2024, resulting in 15 million accounts being leaked. 

Trello owner Atlassian claimed that the leak was not due to unauthorized access. While accurate, the leak can still be attributed to poor Trello security. The hacker apparently employed a public API to match an existing database of 50 million emails with Trello accounts.

Access to Trello is largely via private and corporate email addresses. Exposing access to the service potentially offers a Trello-themed attack vector for a phishing operation. Leaked data – totaling 15,115,516 entries - was offered for sale on a hacking forum, supposedly containing “emails, usernames, full names and other account info.” 

Since learning of the background of this data leak, Trello’s public APIs have been hardened and now require authentication. This incident followed the November 2023 discovery of a zero-day vulnerability in Atlassian’s Confluence suite.

9. VARTA 

A cyber attack on February 12th, 2024 caused German battery manufacturer VARTA to halt production. Affecting IT systems and related production equipment, the attack resulted in five plants closing.

VARTA produces batteries for EVs and ICE vehicles, as well as domestic batteries and industrial cells.

VARTA’s response to the attack is short on information, and doesn’t mention if any data was stolen:

“It is now clear that the cyberattack was carried out by an organized group of hackers who managed to break through the high-security standards of VARTA's IT systems with a high level of criminal energy. [...] The amount of the possible damage and the extent to which it is covered by insurance is part of the ongoing investigation.”

Given the lack of information and stolen data, it is difficult to say what the aims of the cyber attack were. Two likely possibilities are that the incursion was a failed ransomware attempt, or a targeted denial of service (DOS) attack.

10. Omni Hotels 

Not for profit development and research management company MITRE published details of a cyberattack that began in January 2024. Detection of the attack’s evolution didn’t occur until April. This targeted its collaboration platform, Networked Experimentation, Research, and Virtualization Environment (NERVE), which is used for R&D and prototyping.

“Suspicious activity” was detected on NERVE, with a foreign-nation state threat actor confirmed as the culprit.

MITRE’s initial reaction was to take NERVE offline temporarily, before contracting Digital Forensics Incident Response personnel. 

No details of the event’s outcome have been shared publicly. However, MITRE has revealed the attack vector. This involved multiple steps, including Ivanti zero-day vulnerabilities, a compromised administrator account, and establishing backdoors to “harvest credentials.”

Given the use of backdoors and credential theft, it seems likely a sizable amount of data was acquired by the hacker.

12. EquiLend

While attacks on healthcare providers and suppliers might be surprising, attacks on financial technology institutions are not. Securities lending infrastructure platform EquiLend was disrupted by unauthorized access on January 22, 2024.

It was established and revealed relatively quickly that this was a ransomware incident. The immediate response was to take some services offline, with the platform returning to action by January 30.

The LockBit group claimed responsibility for the attack, although no data has been offered as proof. Indeed, as full data has not been shared on any of the usual forums, it is possible EquiLend paid the ransom. 

While transaction and customer data was not acquired in the leak, it did include employee data. EquiLend issued a letter to affected personnel, with the offer of complimentary identity theft protection.

“[...] as a precaution, we are offering complimentary identity theft protection services through a two-year membership with Identity Theft Guard Solutions, Inc. (IDX).”

Names, DOBs, and Social Security numbers were included in the leak.

13. KryptonZombie Attacks Cutout.Pro  

If you’ve ever uploaded an image to AI photo and video platform Cutout.Pro, your details could have been included in a 5.93 GB leak. On February 27, 2024, a CSV file of the data was shared on BreachForums, comprising almost 20 million unique records. 

The file is also believed to be distributed via Telegram.

Data including email addresses, names, IP addresses, and hashed and salted passwords were in the database of 19,972,829 people. That might seem like a lot of information for an AI photo editing service, but it offers free and premium tools. It seems the victims of the leaks paid for the honor.

Cutout.Pro’s response has been muted. Refusing initial requests for confirmation from specialists, they eventually replied to one website with a denial. “[We have] never received any emails from users stating that their accounts have been hacked or their information leaked,”  Cutout.Pro users are likely to be the targets of phishing and other email-based scams.

14. Frontier

On April 15 2024, Frontier Communications (known for phone, internet, and TV services) filed a report with the SEC. This covered the details of a recent incident, detected the previous day, which resulted in portions of the company’s systems being taken offline.

The report states “Based on the Company’s investigation, it has determined that the third party was likely a cybercrime group, which gained access to, among other information, personally identifiable information.”

Details in the report (and since) are scant in regard to the suspected attacker (beyond “cybercrime group”) and the data loss. No information has been offered as to whether employee data was taken, or customer data. Given the initial impact and response, the loss of customer data seems more likely. 

15. ThyssenKrupp 

German steel giant ThyssenKrupp AG was targeted by hackers in February 2024, resulting in its automotive division shutting down its IT systems. Automotive Body Solutions, the specific target, halted production when the intrusion was detected. 

“The IT security team at Automotive Body Solutions recognized the incident at an early stage and has since worked with the ThyssenKrupp Group's IT security team to contain the threat,” reported a spokesperson. ThyssenKrupp reports that the event did not impact the supply chain.

No indication has been given as to whether the attack was espionage, intentional disruption, theft, or ransomware. Similarly, no statement indicating the culprit or type of threat actor has been made.

ThyssenKrupp has been the victim of previous cyber incidents. Notable attacks came in 2013, 2016, 2020, and 2022.

16. United Nations Development Programme 

Proving that cybercriminals are not afraid to go big, the 8Base ransomware gang hit the UNDP in March 2024. Based on details uploaded to the hackers’ leak site, the breach resulted in sensitive data being stolen. This included personal data, certificates, contracts, invoices, receipts, and more. 

Disclosing the event on April 16, 2024, the UNDP stated it had “received a threat intelligence notification that a data-extortion actor had stolen data which included certain human resources and procurement information.”

While it seems the ransom was not paid, it is believed the disclosure underplayed the volume of data involved. Other United Nations agencies are not thought to have been affected.

8Base is known to use a variant of the Phobos ransomware and appears to be prolific at hacking. It lists over 350 victims on its website.

17. US Local Governments 

Local governments and associations around the world are routinely victims of cyberattacks. Often the fallout impacts taxpayers and the people who use the services provided.

So far in 2024, three US county departments have been hit: Robeson County (NC), Hernando County (Fla), and Jackson County (MO). In addition, the city of Wichita, Kansas, has been hit. All appear to be coordinated ransomware attacks, confirmed within days of each other.

In Robeson County, a data security breach reported on April 18, 2024, resulted in online services being inaccessible to the public. An official response stated (WPDE) that the county administrators were: “engaging the assistance of the North Carolina Joint Cybersecurity Task Force, the North Carolina National Guard cyber unit, as well as federal and state law enforcement agencies.”

To date, no further information has been divulged, and emergency dispatch services were not affected.

A ransomware attack hit Hernando County government infrastructure, an event that was confirmed on April 4, 2024. By April 12, the event was confirmed as a ransomware attack that knocked public and internal-facing services offline. Officials announced that “The County is cooperating with state and federal law enforcement and a team of cybersecurity experts to investigate the claims and the full nature and scope of the incident.” Unfortunately, this confirmation doesn’t extend to any real details about the attack.

Jackson County, meanwhile, released news of an attack on April 2, 2024, and announced a state of emergency. The county administration confirmed it had “identified significant disruptions within its IT systems, potentially attributable to a ransomware attack.” 

In Wichita, a ransomware attack on May 5, 2024, resulted in the city shutting down parts of its network. This included online payment networks for utilities, transport tickets, and other items. No information about the ransomware attack’s scale, or the suspected attacker, has been released. 

With regard to the impact on resident’s data, only the following has been confirmed: “We are completing a thorough review and assessment of this matter, including the potential impact on data. Detailed assessments of these types of incidents take time. We thank you for your patience, understanding, and respect for the integrity of this review process.”

At the time of writing, no further details have been announced about any of these cyberattacks. 

A 2023 study by Sophos revealed an increase from 58% to 69% in local government-targeted cyberattacks and incidents.

18. Fujitsu 

On March 15, 2024, the world’s sixth-largest IT services provider, Fujitsu confirmed that it had been the target of a cyberattack. The Japanese conglomerate, which has 124,000 employees worldwide, announced the event following a report to Japan’s Personal Information Protection Commission. Such a report would indicate that Fujitsu believes personal information may have been stolen in the breach.

“We confirmed the presence of malware on several of our company's work computers, and as a result of an internal investigation, it was discovered that files containing personal information and customer information could be illegally taken out.” (Fujitsu statement translated from Japanese).

Interestingly, Fujitsu has yet to file similar reports in the USA, UK, or with any other government. 

Fujitsu is in a privileged position, as it provides IT services (mainly database and cloud) to government and 1private sector operations worldwide.

19. Prudential Financial 

Fortune 500 company Prudential Financial detected a breach on February 5, 2024, a day after suspected cybercriminals accessed company and employee data.

The SEC filing outlines the details.

"As of the date of this Report, we believe that the threat actor, who we suspect to be a cybercrime group, accessed Company administrative and user data from certain information technology systems and a small percentage of Company user accounts associated with employees and contractors." 

Originally, there was no indication that customer or client data was taken. However, a subsequent filing revealed that 36,545 people had been affected. Names, addresses, driving license numbers, and other ID were taken in the data breach.

The ALPHV ransomware group claimed responsibility for the attack and uploaded data to its dark web portal.

20. Octapharma Plasma 

As of April 18, 2024, it appears that the blood plasma provider was subjected to a ransomware attack. The immediate response was to close its 150-plus US-based centers, but suspicions remain that the parent company, Octapharma AG, may also have been hit. 

If true, this would have ramifications for its European operations.

A source knowledgeable about the incident claims that BlackSuit ransomware was to blame. This malware doesn’t just encrypt the data it targets, it also makes an unencrypted copy for the cyber attacker. This can then be distributed as the attacker feels necessary.

BlackSuit posted details of the data it stole, which includes donor information, lab data, business-sensitive information, and employee details. Currently, the organization has refused to publicly confirm details of the cyber attack.

21. LoanDepot 

On January 8, 2024, loan and mortgage company LoanDepot announced it was dealing with a cyber incident. This was later confirmed to involve the theft of data pertaining to 16.6 million customers. 

While the company was coy about the details of the cyberattack, its regulatory post-attack filing revealed more. “LoanDepot […] recently identified a cybersecurity incident affecting certain of the Company’s systems. Upon detecting unauthorized activity, the Company promptly took steps to contain and respond to the incident, including launching an investigation with assistance from leading cybersecurity experts, and began the process of notifying applicable regulators and law enforcement.”

It also indicated that the attack was ransomware. “[...]the unauthorized third party activity included access to certain Company systems and the encryption of data.” (Our emphasis.)

Though our investigation is ongoing, at this time, the Company has determined that the unauthorized third-party activity included access to certain Company systems and the encryption of data. In response, the Company shut down certain systems and continues to implement measures to secure its business operations, bring systems back online, and respond to the incident.

How does 2024 compare so far with other years? 

Approaching the midway point of 2024, it is difficult to state with any certainty whether it is worse than 2023. What we can say is that things appear to be increasingly challenging.

The IMF, itself a target of cyberattacks in 2024, has declared that “the risk of extreme losses from cyber incidents is increasing.” Its Global Financial Stability Report features a look at Financial Vulnerabilities and Risks and demonstrates an uptick in cyber incidents in 2023. Meanwhile, estimated losses increased from $0.5 billion in 2017 to almost $2.5 billion in 2021.

There is no reason to expect this figure to have declined significantly.

What happens to data leaked in breaches? 

If cyberattacks result in data being stolen, it typically ends up being available to buy on the dark web. 

Sometimes, the data is available to multiple buyers; on other occasions, it is up for sale to the highest bidder. The value of data depends on what information is included, and how recent it is. So, data with new email addresses and bank details will be more valuable than a leak of older data.

Because data leaks resulting from cyberattacks and other malicious actions aren’t always reported, the impact can be difficult to judge. Using a resource like  haveibeenpwned.com is a good way to check if your details have been leaked. This website, maintained by Troy Hunt, is a searchable record of leaked data. Email addresses and passwords can be checked, and it displays which leak resulted in the data being made public. 

Avast One Gold is a powerful security suite with a top-rated antivirus, web protection and a host of privacy extras. Top of the list is an unlimited VPN, but other welcome features include a firewall, device cleanup, tracker blocking, and a lengthy list of speed, privacy and protection tools.

Signing up gets you coverage for up to five devices, and there’s support for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

Avast One Gold is a very capable suite, broadly comparable to the likes of Bitdefender Premium Security or Norton 360 Deluxe. In this review we’ll look at everything it has to offer, and whether this could be the ideal security suite for you.

Avast One Gold: Pricing

Avast One comes in four editions.

Avast One Basic is a Windows-only app with antivirus, web protection, a limited VPN and not much else.

Avast One Silver protects up to three Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices, and adds an unlimited VPN along with a scattering of other features. It’s yours for $2.99 a month ($35.88 billed annually) in year one, $6.67 a month ($79.99 billed annually) on renewal.

Avast One Gold covers up to five devices and adds many more performance, privacy and security tools . It costs $6.99 a month ($83.88 billed annually) in year one, $14.99 a month ($179.99 billed annually) on renewal.

Avast One Premium is essentially Avast One Gold with full identity theft protection thrown in, including credit report monitoring and $2 million insurance. It’s more expensive at $9.99 a month in year one (a total of $119.88), $24.99 a month ($299.99 a year) on renewal, but then it does also cover 30 devices. Could be good value if you’ve a lot of hardware to protect.

Avast One Gold is within the price range we expect for a premium security suite, but some of the top competition are a little cheaper. Bitdefender Premium Security has a full VPN and covers up to ten devices, but it’s fractionally cheaper at $79.99 in year one, $159.99 on renewal. And Norton 360 Deluxe is the clear value leader, with a full VPN and five device support for only $49.99 in year one, $119.99 on renewal.

Avast One Gold: Getting started

Avast One installed easily on our test Windows laptop. The setup program ran a couple of scans to identify and remove any existing malware, and one reboot later, we were ready to go.

The Avast One interface has a colorful, friendly look, replacing dull Windows app icons and widgets with a light and airy design and a sprinkling of cartoon-like graphics (a running dog rather than a progress bar, for instance.)

The opening Avast One screen has a handy button to launch a Smart Scan, while other tiles include buttons to enable or disable the VPN, delete your browser history, clear your hard drive, optimize your running processes, and more.

An Explore button displays icons for many other features: the web shield to protect your browsing, email guardian to monitor local and webmail messages for dangerous links, a firewall, webcam protection, dark web monitoring, the software updater to find missing security patches, and more. 

Choose an option for the first time and Avast One usually displays a simple tutorial page; a screenshot of the image with notes explaining what to do. It’s a smart way to help explain the very basics for security newbies.

Mostly, the Avast One interface works very well. It’s simple enough for beginners to use right away, yet also makes it reasonably straightforward for experts to find the options they need.

Avast One Gold: Antivirus Lab Test Results

Although we put every antivirus app we review through our own series of tests, we also pay close attention to results from the big antivirus testing labs.

We follow nine tests from labs including AV-Comparatives (Real-World Protection, Malware Protection, Android, Anti-Phishing, Performance), AV-Test (Windows, Android), MRG Effitas (360° Protection Testing) and SE Labs (Endpoint Security Home).

Each test has its own scoring system, making it tricky to compare performance. To address this, we use a special algorithm which (as long as an app is in at least five tests) converts the various results into a single summary score from zero to 10 representing the vendor’s overall rating.

Avast’s combined score was an excellent 9.98, putting it in first place, just ahead of Bitdefender (9.97), Avira (9.96) and F-Secure (9.96.)

Avast did this by appearing in all nine of the tests we monitor, too, the only provider to manage that, and giving us even more confidence that this is a reliable measure of Avast’s abilities.

No antivirus provider excels at everything, and Avast does have one or two weaker points. Bitdefender beat it into second place for anti-phishing, for instance, and ESET and Bitdefender outperformed Avast in the last Advanced Threat Protection report (a measure of how well an antivirus can block more complex and sophisticated attacks.)

Reaching ‘only’ second place for anti-phishing isn’t exactly a problem, though, and Avast more than makes up for that with first (or equal first) places in the Real-World Protection, Malware Protection, Android (AV-Test), MRG Effitas and SE Labs reports.

Put it all together and the message is clear: whatever threat your device encounters, Avast has some of the best tools around to keep you safe.

Avast One Gold: Tough on brand new files

Avast One automatically scans files as you open or launch them, allowing it to detect most threats before they can cause any harm. That’s good, but Avast does have one feature which could be annoying.

If you launch an app Avast hasn’t seen before, Avast One typically pauses the app and leaves you waiting for 15-60 seconds while it analyses the file for threats. During the review, we had a couple of occasions where Avast couldn’t decide whether an app was dangerous or not, so sent the file to its Threat Labs and blocked it from running until it got a verdict back (which could take a few hours.)

This can be a real hassle if, say, you’ve just downloaded a new installer which you’re 100% sure is safe. It’s also far more intrusive than many competitors. For example, if Avira doesn’t recognize a file, it generally just tells you that and asks if you’d like to run it anyway.

But, there’s no doubt Avast’s approach is more secure. If you’re the type of user who will run into this situation all the time - you’re a developer building your own projects, say - this might be so annoying that you decide to turn the feature off. But for everyone else, Avast just about earns a thumbs up for its tough security-first design.

Avast One Gold: Antivirus scanning

Avast One offers various types of on-demand scan to check everything from a single file to an entire hard drive for potential danger.

The default Smart Scan quickly checks the most commonly-infected areas for malware, identifies security vulnerabilities and even helps free up drive space by highlighting junk files that can safely be deleted.

On our test device, Smart Scan completed in around a minute, but still managed to find two relevant security settings issues (Data Execution Prevention not turned on and notifications visible on our lock screen), and noticed a couple of desktop text files stuffed with phishing links.

Avast can also scan selected files, folders or drives from Explorer (right-click and choose ‘Scan selected items for viruses’.) There’s a Deep Scan option to check your entire system, a Boot-Time Scan to look for threats before Windows boots (valuable for catching stealthy threats), and even a Custom Scan feature to define your own checks. 

Scanning speeds aren’t the best. Avast scanned 50GB+ of test executables in around 35 minutes, while Norton took 32 minutes and Avira required 26:30. Bitdefender was fractionally slower at 37 minutes on its first run, but because it only scans new or changed files by default, this dropped to 30 seconds on the second scan. Avast stayed at around 35 minutes for subsequent scans.

This shouldn’t be an issue for most users, though, because it generally isn’t necessary to run regular on-demand scans. Overall, Avast scores well on scanning for delivering several scan types, and giving you plenty of options to create scans of your own and automatically run them whenever you like.

Avast One Gold: Password-protected files

Scanning archives presents all kinds of issues for antivirus, so we pay close attention to how each app handles these situations. Avast One scored for recognizing common archive formats and not being tricked by zip bombs (archives within archives within archives), but it’s not so great at handling password-protected files: it just ignores them. And that’s a concern.

Suppose a work colleague gives you a bunch of files to share with others, and one of those is a password-protected zip which (unknown to you) is infected with malware. You scan the folder with Avast One, it checks the files it can open, ignores the password-protected file that it can’t, and says ‘we didn’t find any viruses.’ You’ll assume that means all the files are clean, when that simply isn’t true.

Bitdefender handles this much better. If it finds a file is password-protected, Bitdefender prompts you for the password. If you don’t know what it is, you’re warned about any skipped files in the scan report. Instead of Avast’s ‘we didn’t find anything’, Bitdefender tells you ‘we didn’t find anything (but we couldn’t look here)’, a potentially very important extra detail.

This may not have much, perhaps any real-world impact on your security. Once you unzip your archive with the password, Avast One should automatically detect any threats as they’re written to your drive. But there is still scope for problems, especially if you send the archive to someone else without unpacking it yourself.

Avast One Gold: Anti-ransomware

Ransomware is one of the most dangerous threats around, with Sophos’ latest ‘State of Ransomware’ report finding that 59% of organizations had experienced an attack in the last year.

We test an antivirus’ ransomware-fighting abilities by pitting the app against our own simple ransomware simulator. Avast scored well initially, detecting our simulator before it was able to run. But the bad news is once we made a small change to the simulator code, Avast didn’t recognise the file as a threat, and it was able to encrypt 3GB+ of user documents without any issues.

Although that’s not good news, Avast scores very highly when measured against genuine ransomware. MRG Effitas’ latest Ransomware tests pitted Avast against 37 ransomware samples, and it blocked every one.

It’s not just about detection. Avast One also has an extra layer of protection which prevents untrusted apps from modifying files in specific folders. This protects your desktop, Documents, Pictures, Videos and Music folders by default, and you can easily apply it to others. 

We turned this extra protective layer on for the test folder, and Avast wouldn’t allow the simulator to modify any files unless we gave permission.  That doesn’t completely solve the problem, because Avast still didn’t recognize our simulator as dangerous; it was able to keep running, and could try to carry out other compromising tasks. But this is still a useful extra feature which may protect your system from brand new ransomware threats.

Avast One Gold: Anti-phishing

The best security apps don’t just block threats as they arrive: they prevent you ever accessing them in the first place. That’s why we’re always very interested in an app’s ability to keep you safe from phishing and other malicious websites.

The independent labs don’t pay much attention to phishing, but AV-Comparatives does have a small annual test with a handful of providers. The last report gave Avast a decent detection rate of 94%, just behind Bitdefender (96%), but outperforming ESET (92%) and Avira (88%.)

We ran a test of our own, and attempted to access 100 brand new phishing URLs on an Avast-protected system. Avast’s protection rate was very similar at 93%, but others did better; Norton reached 95%, Bitdefender 96%, and Avira led the way with a perfect 100%.

We also compared Avast’s results with Chrome, giving us a better idea of how much additional protection it offered. The results were very positive: Chrome only detected 65% of our test threats, so Avast identified an additional 28%. And in some extra good news, Chrome detected all seven of the phishing sites Avast missed, which means using Avast and Chrome together would block 100% of our sample threats.

Avast One Gold Performance impact

Detection rates and threat blocking stats are important, but there’s another factor to consider. The best antivirus apps keep you safe without slowing your device down, raising false alarms or otherwise interfering with your day.

AV-Comparatives’ Performance Test measures the performance impact of 16 antivirus apps on tasks including browsing websites, downloading files, and installing and launching applications. Avast had no significant impact on any area, earning the company an excellent equal third with Avira, just behind ESET and McAfee. 

We used the excellent PCMark benchmark to measure every aspect of our review laptop performance, and it delivered even better results. Although there’s only a tiny difference between the top providers, Avast One still beat Bitdefender, Norton and Avira for its minimal speed impact.

Antivirus can also slow you down by raising false alarms, making it more difficult to download or install legitimate apps. Avast isn’t quite the best around, but it has fewer than most, reaching equal third in AV-Comparatives’ False Alarm test behind Trend Micro and Bitdefender. 

Avast One Gold: Email Guardian

Email Guardian scans your incoming and outgoing emails for dangerous attachments. Most antivirus apps do something similar, but what’s different here is Email Guardian doesn’t just protect local email service like Outlook: it can also optionally monitor webmail accounts, filtering messages in the cloud to protect you from incoming threats.

We tried adding a Gmail account, and it worked much like adding an extension to most web services: Google explained Avast was asking to access our emails, we gave permission, and that was that. Easy.

While that’s a definite protection plus, it does also require giving your email address, account details and full email access to Avast. If you want to preserve the maximum possible privacy, that might be a step too far. But if it’s not a problem for you, Email Guardian is simple to set up and works with Gmail, Outlook, AOL, Comcast, GMX, Mail.ru, Seznam, Web.de, Yahoo and Yandex accounts.

Avast One Gold: Firewall

Avast’s Firewall monitors incoming and outgoing traffic to prevent hackers accessing your device, or malware sending your personal information to the outside world.

This isn’t the traditional expert-level firewall software provided by Bitdefender or Norton, where you can fine-tune network traffic by setting up complex rules (block or allow traffic by protocol, port and more.)

Instead, Avast One generally makes its own decisions about which traffic to block. We were able to view a history of recently blocked traffic in the firewall window, but there’s no option to tweak this behavior in future, no way to say ‘please allow the connection next time.’

The firewall does allow you to choose processes which then won’t be able to access the internet. That could be useful if an app uses too much data, say, but isn’t as helpful for security. (If you don’t trust an app then you should uninstall it, not just block its web access.)

Put it all together and the firewall follows the same pattern as many Avast One features. It could be useful in a few situations, but it’s not as powerful as similar tools from the top competition. And as long as Avast still detected and blocked malicious apps in the background, you wouldn’t miss the firewall window if it wasn’t there.

Avast One Gold: Avast SecureLine VPN

Avast SecureLine VPN protects your identity and traffic just like any specialist VPN service, but it aims to be much easier to use. There’s no display of IP addresses or other cryptic networking details, no real complexities at all: just a switch on the main Avast One dashboard to connect to the VPN when you need it, and disconnect when you don’t.

There’s a version of the VPN available in the free Avast One Basic. This looks better than most, thanks to a generous 5GB data allowance a week, but beware. You can’t choose your location (the app automatically chooses the nearest server), and there’s no access to settings, so you can’t enable the kill switch.

Fortunately, Avast One Silver and Gold include the full and unlimited VPN. There are no data limits or settings restrictions, and you get access to Avast’s network of 59 cities across 37 countries. That might be enough for your needs (and it beats Norton VPN’s 29 countries), but Bitdefender offers 53 countries, and many specialist VPN providers have 80 countries and more.

Avast One Gold: VPN Features

Avast’s VPN settings are a little limited. There’s no ability to choose a protocol  (the app supports WireGuard and OpenVPN, but decides the best option itself), and no split tunneling or other more advanced features.

The app does have a kill switch, and it worked reasonably well in testing. When we closed the Avast process responsible for the WireGuard connection, for instance, our internet was blocked immediately, the app notified us that it was reconnecting, and we were back online, VPN restored, in a couple of seconds.

An unusual auto-connect feature can automatically turn on the VPN when you access banking sites, when you’re shopping, streaming, torrenting and more. Bitdefender has something similar, and it’s potentially very useful, as it reduces the chance that you’ll forget to turn on the VPN at a sensitive site.

Unfortunately, Avast’s version just didn’t work as expected. It mis-labelled some sites, for example warning us to enable the VPN for banking when we visited the genealogy site Ancestry.com or the UK property site Rightmove. It didn’t work at all with many popular UK streaming sites, and then it simply stopped working, for no apparent reason, and wouldn’t auto-connect for any site we tried. We don’t know how common this might be, but if you can’t rely on auto-connect working whenever you need it, then the feature really isn’t much use at all.

Avast One VPN speeds varied quite a bit, but were generally very acceptable. The free version managed 70-220Mbps, for instance, more than enough for any task, and the unlimited VPN peaked at around 800Mbps.

Unblocking results were poor. Avast couldn’t get us into Netflix in the US, UK, Australia, Canada or Japan, for instance. It also failed with BBC iPlayer, ITV and Channel 4. 

Avast did score one success in Australia, where we were able to access 9Now. But most VPNs do the same, and Avast couldn’t unblock the far better defended 10Play.

Although Avast clearly isn’t a great VPN, it delivers just-about-acceptable results on privacy at least, especially for the price you’re paying. NordVPN is our top-rated VPN, for instance, but its one-year Basic plan costs $68.85; Avast Silver only costs $35.88 in year one, and that’s the VPN, antivirus and a full security suite, too.

Avast One Gold: Webcam Protection

Webcam Protection prevents webcam hijacking by preventing untrusted apps from using your camera unless you give permission. Or if you rarely use your webcam, there’s a more extreme option to turn it off for everyone.

This mostly worked as expected. We ran several custom apps to grab webcam images and audio; Avast One recognised which were trusted and which weren’t, asked if the app was safe, and didn’t allow access if we clicked the ‘Block’ button.

We noticed that if we simply closed the ‘Block or Allow?’ box, though, without clicking either option, Avast allowed the app to access our device. That’s potentially unsafe if, say, the user is in a hurry and closes the box without properly reading it. We prefer this kind of tool to block apps by default, and only permit access if the user specifically clicks the Allow button.

Avast One Gold: Sensitive Data Shield

The Sensitive Data Shield can limit access to confidential documents to specific apps or other user accounts on your PC. It works, but protection is limited to PDFs and documents in Office format, and if someone can access the device using your account then they can also access your files as usual. If you need to protect key files, save them using an encrypted storage service such as NordLocker or Microsoft OneDrive’s Personal Vault, and they’ll provide far better protection.

Avast One Gold: Bonus Protection Tools

Avast One’s Device Protection menu looks impressive, initially, with no less than 15 tools. This isn’t as good as you might think, because Avast has padded the list out by giving related features their own menu entry (virus and email scanning and quarantine take up four menu options, for instance.) But we’re looked at valuable tools like anti-phishing, firewall and ransomware protection already, and there are other interesting features here.

The Sandbox allows you to run untrusted apps in an isolated environment where they can’t change files, modify system settings or generally damage your system.

A sandbox can be handy for expert users who understand how they work, but they have their limits. This one allows apps to access the internet by default, for instance, so if an app steals some passwords and sends them home, the sandbox won’t help (you can turn off internet access in settings, but then some apps may not work at all.) In general, if you don’t trust an app then the answer isn’t to run it in the sandbox: it’s not to run it at all.

Network Inspector is a feature which automatically scans new networks for vulnerabilities every time you connect to them. That’s good to know, but it’s difficult to usefully test this kind of feature, and we can’t be sure how effective Network Inspector might be.

Avast One’s Web Hijack Guard blocks DNS hijacking attacks, where a hacker redirects you from the banking or shopping site you need, to a malicious clone which then steals your details.

Web Hijack Guard works by routing DNS requests through an encrypted connection to Avast’s own secure DNS server. That does offer some protection, but it might conflict with VPNs, which also try to redirect your DNS. If your VPN offers DNS-based web content blocking, for instance, this won’t work if Avast grabs your DNS instead.

Finally, Avast’s Password Protection prevents apps accessing passwords stored in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, unless you give permission. We ran an app to read our Chrome passwords, and, sure enough, Avast One raised an alert. It’s a small feature, but an unusual one we rarely see elsewhere, and we’re happy it’s included here.

Avast One Gold: Bank Mode

Avast’s Bank Mode is a custom Chrome-based browser which runs in its own virtual desktop, isolated from the rest of your system. Access banking or other sensitive sites using Bank Mode, and even if malware is running on your system, it shouldn’t be able to grab screenshots, log keypresses or otherwise see what you’re doing.

Avast didn’t automatically prompt us to use Bank Mode when we visited a few banking sites, unlike Bitdefender and its similar Safepay feature. We launched it manually, and were surprised to see Bank Mode automatically install (though not activate) a host of Chrome extensions, including some from other vendors: Avira Browser Safety, Password Manager and Safe Shopping; Kaspersky Protection; Malwarebytes Browser Guard; McAfee Web Boost; even NordVPN and PureVPN Chrome extensions.

There may have been others, too; Chrome displayed an ‘Error’ message after installing these addons, though it wasn’t clear why. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, because although these extensions were installed, they weren’t activated, they wouldn’t run any code unless you manually turned them on. Still, it seems odd to create an environment which you want to be isolated from other processes, but then fill that environment with all kinds of apps from assorted vendors. 

The core of Bank Mode works reasonably well. We launched it with a click, and browsed as usual. A commercial keylogger (and our own custom logger) weren’t able to record our keypresses, and a screenshot tool wasn’t able to take images of Bank Mode activity. 

Overall, we suspect most users won’t see enough benefit from the likes of Bank Mode or Safepay to justify the hassle of using a separate secure browser. If you feel you need that extra protection, we think Bitdefender’s Safepay is a little, well, safer. But Avast One’s Bank Mode is more convenient to use, and adds some useful extra layers of protection. 

Avast One Gold: More Privacy Tools

Avast One includes a number of smaller features which aim to protect your privacy online.

Tracking Prevention randomises your device fingerprint, preventing sites tracking you with browser fingerprinting. It doesn’t need any configuration: just install Avast One Gold and it goes to work right away. Avast warns that the technology might cause issues with some websites, though, and there’s no way to add those as exceptions. If there are problems, all you can do is turn Tracking Prevention off entirely.

Clear Browsing Data is a one-stop tool which allows you to delete all your browser histories with one click. It displayed the total space taken by the least important Chrome, Firefox and Edge data on our review PC, and deleted all of it when we clicked ‘Remove.’

Sensible default settings mean Clear Browsing Data deletes tracking cookies and your browser cache, but not regular cookies or your browser history. That’s good to see, and means you’ll stay logged into most websites when the wiping is complete. But there are plenty of free cleanup tools around which do a lot more, and even Avast’s CCleaner includes many extra cleaning tools and configuration options.

Private Mode improves your browsing privacy by connecting to the VPN, enabling tracking protection and opening your browser in Incognito mode. This might make you a little safer, but it took us four clicks to open from Avast’s dashboard: in real world use, we would probably just enable the VPN and private browsing when we needed it, in the normal way.

Dark Web Monitoring checks your email address to see if it’s been included in a data breach, or - if you provide your email to create an Avast account - regularly monitors the address and raises an alert if it appears in a new breach.

While this can be interesting, most of the breaches for our email address were ancient history, with some ten or more years old. You can get much the same information for free at Have I Been Pwned. 

The Privacy Advisor sounds more promising, with details on how to optimize privacy settings for Google, Facebook, Twitter/ X, Amazon, Instagram, Linkedin and YouTube, as well as a handful of Android and iOS apps (WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, Messenger.)

Privacy Advisor can’t automate these changes, unfortunately. Instead it displays step-by-step tutorials on how to find whatever settings you might want to tweak. 

The guides are well presented, with screenshots and occasional buttons to open the right settings page. But some of the advice didn’t match what we saw on our accounts - settings text had changed, maybe a setting was in a different place - and we had to do a little more work to hunt down the right option.

Avast One Gold: Performance Tools

Early Windows antivirus apps often hit PC performance, reducing device speeds to a crawl. It’s very different these days - developers are smarter, hardware is much faster - but Avast and others still include speedup features to try and compensate for any slowdown.

Driver Updater finds and installs missing device driver updates. In theory this could be a good idea, optimizing performance and highlighting missing security patches, but there are dangers. If Avast One makes a single error in the update process, it could break your PC to the point that it won’t even boot. Avast One has no built-in way to undo driver changes, either, so you’re left to rely on System Restore or other Windows recovery options.

Driver Updater does still have some value. If nothing else, just seeing that, say, your webcam has a really outdated driver could be helpful if it’s misbehaving. But it’s best to use it, well, cautiously.

Avast One Gold: PC Speedup

Avast’s PC Speedup is a clever tool which optimizes PC performance by reducing the number of processes running in the background. The less resources these processes use, the more your main apps will get.

We ran PC Speedup, and it listed 35 processes that were running in the background of our review laptop, along with an estimate of their impact on performance. Clicking a ‘Details’ link displayed brief details on what the process does, and an Optimise button prevented the process using resources until we opened it.

Using PC Speedup properly requires a lot of work. In our case, we would have to work through all 35 processes, read the Details page, maybe Google for the process, try to decide if it was suitable for optimisation, or not. Many of our 35 processes were important - software updaters, our backup service - and optimising the wrong process could cause all kinds of unexpected problems. (Including security issues, if we stopped getting updates.)

PC Speedup is an interesting feature which could make a real performance difference to some systems. But, it’s not for non-technical types, and you’ll need plenty of time and PC knowledge to use the tool safely.

Avast One Gold: Disk Cleaner

As the name suggests, Disk Cleaner helps free up storage space by identifying junk files that can safely be deleted.

The tool told us it could recover a huge 34.1GB, but that’s largely because it included 12GB+ of old Restore Points, there was 14GB of data in the Recycle Bin, and it suggested clearing out the Downloads folder.

In theory you can view Disk Cleaner’s chosen files and decide whether to delete them or not, but poor design makes this tricky. Most similar tools clearly identify the applications they’re cleaning, so you can easily choose to wipe Chrome’s history, Google Earth’s cache, and so on. But Avast displays generic titles like ‘Program Backup Files’, ‘Program Cache Files’ and ‘Program Log Files’, for instance. If you don’t want to delete Google Earth files, you must choose each section in turn and scroll through potentially thousands of files to find what you need.

We think Avira Prime’s Power Cleaner is a much better tool. It did a much better job of cleaning up leftover Windows and application junk, finding 31.7GB it could delete (and that didn’t include System Restore points), and it’s much easier to decide what to keep and what to dump.

Avast One Gold: Avast One for Mac

We were impressed by Avast One’s antivirus performance on Windows, but Mac users get even better protection: both AV-Comparatives and AV-Test gave Avast 100% for protection in their last Mac tests.

The app looks great, with the same clean and friendly interface as the Windows edition. Tap the Explore icon on the left and everything you need is just a click or two away.

We found the Avast app easy to use, and it generally performed well in our tests. One exception was the VPN’s auto-connect feature, which proved just as flaky as on Windows. When we turned it on for streaming, for instance, it worked initially for Netflix, but did nothing when we tried the site later, and entirely ignored BBC iPlayer and Disney Plus. Not an option we can recommend.

Avast One for Mac is a little short on features. It has the core antivirus, ransomware, email and web protection, along with the unlimited VPN and dark web monitoring. But the firewall, sandbox, Bank Mode, webcam protection and other Windows features haven’t made it to the Mac. And some tools are less powerful than their Windows cousins (there’s no kill switch with the Mac VPN.)

Overall, Avast One for Mac scores for its excellent malware protection and unlimited VPN. If you don’t need the VPN, though, Avast One Free might be enough for you. And if it’s power you’re after, Norton 360 for Mac has a firewall, webcam protection, cloud backup and even parental controls. (Oh, and it’s cheaper, too.)

Avast One Gold: Avast One for Android

Avast One for Android may not have all the features we found on Windows, but it includes the protection essentials, and throws in one or two mobile-friendly extras for good measure.

Avast’s Android malware protection is accurate and reliable, scoring 100% for both well-known and zero day threats in AV-Test’s last report, for instance. That puts it equal first in the protection charts along with Norton, Bitdefender and Trend Micro, and fractionally ahead of Avira, F-Secure and McAfee.

As with Avast One on the desktop, there’s a VPN, too. Free users can’t choose their location and are limited to 5GB data a week (though that’s still generous for a free VPN), but signing up for Avast One Gold drops the restrictions and sees you able to use the service as much as you like.

The app includes Avast One’s capable web, anti-phishing and email protection, and has a handful of the features we’ve discussed above: data breaching monitoring alerts you if your email appears on the dark web, for instance, while Privacy Insights explains how to secure various apps and web accounts, and Performance Center helps you find and delete junk files.

There are one or two features you won’t find on Windows. App Lock allows you to lock individual apps with a PIN, password or fingerprint; App Insights shows you which apps use what permissions, and Photo Vault can prevent others viewing certain photos unless they have the PIN.

You won’t be overwhelmed with Avast One’s Android abilities, but it does a solid job of protecting your device

Avast One Gold: Avast One for iOS

Avast One’s iOS edition is the most basic in the range, as we see with most security suites. But there’s still worthwhile protection from malicious links in your browser and emails, while the unlimited VPN keeps your internet traffic safe from snoopers.

A handful of extras include dark web monitoring to warn you if your details appear in a data breach, and an option to keep photos hidden in an encrypted folder that only you can access. These work as advertised, but they’re not outstanding in any way, and there are better apps and services you can use for free.

The app looks good and has the same visual style as the rest of the range, though with some odd design differences. VPN locations on iOS are grouped by continent, for instance; on Windows, they’re in one big alphabetically-sorted list; and on Android, they’re a jumbled mess. That might be confusing if you’re using Avast One on several platforms, and it’s surely not that difficult to fix. If you generally just hit ‘On’ to access your nearest server then you may never notice, though, and in general the app is easy to use.

Overall, Avast One for iOS is a decent security app, but it’s exactly overflowing with features. If you don’t need the unlimited VPN, the free Avast One Basic may be enough. There’s no Email Guardian to highlight malicious links in your emails, but you get the same browsing protection, and although the free VPN doesn’t allow changing location, its 5GB a week data allowance is far more generous than most.

Avast One Gold: Final verdict

Avast One Gold has some of the best malware protection around and a stack of protection, privacy and performance features, but it also has a couple of problems. If your needs are simple, Avast One Basic gives you very similar protection for free; and if you’re after power, Bitdefender and Norton have suites with excellent antivirus, full VPNs and even more security features to explore. Avast One is still worth a look, but test the free version before you buy. 

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As networks evolve, so do the threats from cyberattackers. New network-capable devices mean new attack vectors for malware, ransomware, and unauthorized access attempts. 

Laptops, phones, smart devices, IoT equipment, and even TVs are no longer simply “network devices” – they’re endpoints. The game has changed, which is why endpoint security solutions are necessary. If you are assessing endpoint protection tools, they should have several specific features.

What Is Endpoint Security? 

Typical networks are comprised of computers, laptops, and printers. Previously referred to as “network devices,” the definition has changed over the past few years. Whereas 20 years ago, few mobile devices had access to a corporate network, now they’re probably as common as a laptop. 

Consider the use of virtual machines, smart devices and Internet of Things (IoT) hardware, and network-based security equipment – they all communicate with the network. These endpoints also need security, usually delivered in the shape of endpoint protection solutions.

Various such solutions are available for a modern network. If you’re evaluating endpoint protection for your network, candidate suites should include the following:

• Firewalls, ringfencing, and network control
• Cloud storage and USB protection
• Malware detection and removal
• Ransomware detection
• Allowlisting
• Server and storage access control
• Elevation control
• Threat detection
• Endpoint device tracking
• Single management dashboard
• Compliance

With these features, an endpoint protection suite can be relied upon to ensure your network is robust and secure. 

1. Firewalls, Ringfencing, and Network Control 

The most obvious feature of an endpoint protection solution is the firewall. A modern firewall within a network of endpoints has more specific tasks than a traditional firewall, however. 

Because users no longer work purely in the office, the corporate hardware firewall no longer offers the protection it did. But that doesn’t mean there is no place for firewalls in endpoint security solutions.

Individual devices can be protected with access controls, with custom-built policies to protect access to a device.

With network endpoints becoming more diverse, a different type of protection is required. Like firewalls, ringfencing blocks network access to applications. The difference is that ringfencing operates to hem-in applications, preventing the exploitation of known (and unknown) vulnerabilities.

Relying on per-user and per-device policies, network access can be carefully managed.

2. Cloud Storage and USB Protection  

Endpoints are almost permanently attached to some form of cloud storage. This might be a local server, a leased server in the cloud, or an enterprise account with a major cloud provider. 

Where cloud drives aren’t used for data storage and sharing, USB devices are the usual alternative. Both offer opportunities for cybercrime; USB devices as potential weak spots, and cloud storage is a target.

Cloud protection provides cloud-based storage and apps with defense against phishing, malware, and spam. Threats specifically targeting cloud storage should also be detected.

For USB devices, endpoint controls of devices means enabling or disabling anything that can be connected by USB. This could mean the complete ban of USB storage devices, with network-wide, device-, or user-targeted restrictions on accessing thumb drives. It can also go further, blocking any USB device you can think of, from input devices to printers, cameras, iPhones, and beyond.

If sensible solutions are to be found, endpoint security that supports cloud and USB controls is recommended.

3. Malware Detection and Removal 

Protecting devices and other endpoints across your network means having a malware detection and removal solution in place. 

While awareness of the risks of malware is improving, users can still be duped. Adware and RiskTool were the biggest threats in 2023 (Statista), while various Trojan malware types were also prominent. Although malware attacks fell sharply in 2020, there has been a slow increase since, with 6.06 billion attacks recorded in 2023 (Statista).

Failure to remove malware expediently can result in considerable damage to all devices on a network. Data can be deleted, ransomware admitted to the network, keystroke loggers hidden, and backdoors established. As a network has a wide selection of device types and operating systems to deal with, successful malware detection is vital.

So, what role should endpoint protection software play in keeping devices free of malware?

At the bare minimum, malware should be isolated or quarantined. The best solution is removal software that can obliterate the malware while reporting the event to similarly at-risk devices.

4. Ransomware Detection 

Ransomware, perhaps the biggest cyber threat to businesses and wealthy individuals, is a key concern for SMBs, enterprises, and organizations alike. Capable of encrypting important data (as well as system files, preventing systems from booting), ransomware often proves expensive.

As decrypting the locked data is usually only possible by paying the ransom, detecting ransomware fast is important.

Unsurprisingly, ransomware can be hugely profitable for cybercriminals, with 46% of businesses paying the ransom. Consequently, it is important for endpoint protection tools to include ransomware detection, and possible removal too.

In 2020, the annual cost of ransomware was $765 million in payouts. In 2022, that figure dropped to $457 million (Statista) but remains significant. Ransomware is believed to comprise 68.42% of cyberattacks.

Ransomware detection also involves a degree of management. Identifying the type of ransomware is important, as well as communicating calmly with the attacker. If the attempt is based on older ransomware, there is a chance that the encrypted data can be unlocked with leaked or broken keys, but this is rare. Newer ransomware is less susceptible to this approach, however.

5. Application Allowlisting 

An application control capability, allowlisting is related to ringfencing. Rather than controlling network or inter-application communication, however, allowlisting focuses on what specific apps, processes, and even files can access.

The name “allowlisting” refers to a network access philosophy of “deny everything.” Adopting this philosophy means access across the network is denied by default. Access is only granted where required, where there is an operation-dependent purpose.  

With allowlisting enabled across endpoints on your network, only trusted files and applications can be accessed and run. Meanwhile, unknown data is blocked, along with unrecognized activities and applications that appear to behave oddly.

Allowlisting can cover everything from data stored on local and network devices to specific applications (anything from virtual machines to media editing and design tools). If a role doesn’t require a word processor, then the user is not allowed to run the word processor. Similarly, if the word processor is not able to open a specific file, then this can be blocked from being opened.

The key benefit of allowlisting is the minimal overhead. Once a profile is configured, the allowlist software manages how apps run and access data on the network. Other than minor configuration adjustments, further interaction should be occasional.

6. Server and Storage Access Control 

Not all endpoints can be found on a desk, or mounted on a wall. Some of them are hugely important, such as storage devices. Storage control tools are a vital component of endpoint protection suites, designed to prevent access to stored files and databases. 

As with cloud and USB storage, these resources are targets for cyberattacks, so pose a challenge.

Whether standard network servers or network-attached storage, mail servers, or intranet, endpoint security tools should feature access control. As many users are likely to require access to network storage from a variety of locations, virtual private network (VPN) connections should be configured. 

Preventing unauthorized access to business-critical resources is usually achieved using private endpoints.

Support for private endpoints and VPNs is a desirable feature for endpoint security products.

7. Elevation Control 

Successful protection of endpoints also requires elevation control. This is a sysadmin-controllable adjustment of permissions and credentials for applications. Elevation control solutions are centered on the applications, rather than user accounts.

This more granular approach means that users benefit from having the ability to install updates. The permissions can be time-based or conditional, however, thereby ensuring a robust environment.

Another benefit of elevation control is the reduced overhead for technicians. If the user can run updates, there is no need to assign a visit, dial-in remotely, or spend time on the deployment server to handle updates.

Elevation control has uses beyond updating software and often comes with a request system. A user can apply for access to specific applications that have not already been installed.

As with the management of system users, elevation control requires regular audit of application permissions. Overlooking incorrect (inadequate or generous) permissions can result in problems later on.

8. Threat Detection 

Where specific malware detection and removal isn’t an option, a more holistic alternative, threat detection, might be.

Endpoint threat detection (often referred to as Endpoint Detection and Response or EDR) is a continuous monitoring system that finds and responds to malware, ransomware, and other intrusions. It can also spot unusual activity from known software applications.

It achieves this by monitoring activity on endpoint devices, and looking for unusual and suspicious behaviors. So, standard activities like running and using applications can be permitted, but unusual actions are blocked. Activity is logged, with data analytics used to find and determine the difference between safe and malicious actions.

Any EDR feature in your chosen endpoint protection software should do more than spot threats, however. Suspicious activity should be validated as such, the threat quarantined, and other endpoints checked for similar risks. 

Information gathered during such incidents can also be logged for reporting purposes.

9. Endpoint Device Tracking 

Endpoint protection systems should ideally include a device tracking feature.

Missing devices are a massive data security issue. While printers and security cameras are less likely to get mislaid, any device that can be carried can be stolen.

The status of hardware isn’t necessarily obvious, however. Devices might be taken on holiday or overseas meetings; endpoint security tools should be set up to receive status notifications that reflect this. 

Any endpoints that have been confirmed lost or stolen can be remotely wiped if they remain online. Furthermore, information can be gathered before wiping. For example, the location can be recorded, along with audio and video from the mic and camera. 

A useful additional feature might be integration with an existing MDM solution. This can help to ensure that management of the lost asset is effectively dealt with and written off. 

10. Single Management Dashboard 

Another feature your endpoint security solution should have is an easy-to-access management dashboard. This could be a server-based client app or a browser-based feature that can also be accessed remotely.

This isn’t a deal-breaker, as the integrity of the network is paramount. However, an accessible, easy-to-use dashboard can make management of the endpoint security simpler and more flexible. If the dashboard supports multiple levels of authority, it can be accessed by sysadmins with different levels of responsibility. Each profile might be focused on a specific task, or provide elevated control over endpoint security, depending on the sysadmin.

While an endpoint protection tool needs plenty of actual security features, a unified dashboard is the best management solution.

11. Endpoint Policy and Compliance 

Another item that isn’t a security feature as such, compliance solutions ensure that policies are applied and enforced across a network. 

Because endpoints are potential vulnerabilities, strict endpoint guidelines should be conceived. Designed to accommodate external (legal) regulations and internal best practices, compliance requirements should be applied to all endpoints.

Various standalone endpoint policy solutions are currently available. While endpoint protection software at the time of writing doesn’t typically include policy compliance, this is a feature that will almost certainly be included in the future.

Why Do Endpoint Protection Solutions Need These Features? 

It’s easy to assume that your chosen endpoint protection solution already includes security features. While some of these features are probably included, it’s unusual to find an endpoint protection system that has them all.

Even the best endpoint security software doesn’t include all of these features. Consider this list a shopping list, a collection of features that should be included. 

Alternatively, you might believe that the security features included with existing software are adequate. Even if this is the case, effectively evaluating both options can avoid issues when the worst happens.

Small, and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are a constant target for cybercrime. By default lacking enterprise-level security practices and solutions, SMBs are at risk of everything from device loss to ransomware.

If you’re evaluating new security software suite for your SMB, specific features should be prioritized before a decision is made.

10 Key Security Features That SMBs Should Focus On 

Some security software – even tools aimed at businesses – will feature unnecessary bells and whistles. This is fine, as long as the core features are present and the software suite remains usable. 

But what are the core features? When considering new business security software, look for these features: 

• Phishing and ID Theft Detection
• Antivirus and Malware Removal
• Firewall and Intrusion Detection
• Policy Management
• Profile Management
• Mobile Security Management
• Password Protection
• Cloud Dashboard and Remote Management
• VPN
• Ransomware Protection

Note that there is a chance that one or more of these features is already present in other software. Avoid duplicating features where possible to reduce the impact on your budget. 

1. Phishing and ID Theft Detection 

A huge threat to the operation of any business or organization is phishing, the main route to ID theft.

Fortinet has recorded 19 different types of phishing attacks, and each of these variations can end with theft. Consider the risks of basic phishing, smishing (where SMS is used in place of email), vishing (voice calls fool the recipient), and whaling. This is where senior company employees (executives, directors) are targeted. They might consider their position in the company hierarchy as being some form of protection.

Successful whaling attacks have been conducted with Zoom links, emails, and even through social networks. LinkedIn and Facebook in particular have become resources for scammers versed in social engineering techniques. 

Detection software that can spot phishing variants should be a priority feature in any evaluation project.

The risks of ID theft are considerable, as they can occur within the workplace and outside. Device loss or theft, home theft, and workplace theft can contribute to ID theft. Having systems in place that can detect the theft or misuse of a colleague’s ID is important. If you’re looking for new business security software, it should offer features in this area.

2. Antivirus and Malware Detection and Removal 

One of the most obvious features of any security software is the detection and removal of malicious software. Along with phishing, malicious software is one of the biggest risks to the integrity of any SMB. 

Rootkits, spyware, and keystroke loggers ("keyloggers") are particular risks that can be handled with standard anti-malware tools. Everything from worms to Trojans and ransomware should also be covered.

Real-time protection and automated removal is an ideal enhancement, and should ideally be included (basic detection and quarantine is the minimum you should be looking for).

These features should be the number one thing you look for when considering new business security software.

3. Firewall

Every system needs a firewall. Physical (hardware) firewalls are a vital aspect of any network, but software firewalls are also required. 

Implementation of any new security software should include local software firewalls. Any automated attempts to gain access to the business network can be effectively blocked. Simultaneously, authorized remote access can be correctly and safely configured.

Operating systems ship with firewalls built in, but intrusion detection is another matter. In most cases, specialized intrusion detection and prevention software is standalone. So, you shouldn’t expect it to be a feature of your business security software. However, some intrusion detection tools support integration with other solutions.

4.  Policy Management System 

Ensuring everyone is on the same page when it comes to your SMB’s online security is tricky. While training on network security and data management policies is beneficial, long-term buy-in by users is tricky to ensure. That’s where a Policy Management System (PMS) comes in.

Similar to a document management system, a PMS ensures complete coverage of policy engagement and compliance. A typical PMS features a centralized, cloud-based storage and management environment. You should also check that policy acceptance is integrated, along with tools to monitor, measure, and audit policy acceptance.

5. Profile Management 

Ensuring specific users have access to the devices, tools, and resources they need will ensure productivity. Restricting users from the things they don’t require access to can ensure improved security.

Covering everything from password length to permissions for running in-house and licensed software, profiles should be centrally managed. Many security tools integrate Microsoft’s Active Directory, which can assist in controlling network access.

One thing to note: Profile Management is difficult on Windows networks without using Active Directory. Some SMBs don’t use Active Directory, instead prefer Google Workplace or Office 365. 

6. Mobile Security Management  

One of the key elements of a modern business is mobile security. Phones, laptops, tablets, and even smart watches play their part in communication and productivity. But if left unobserved, these devices can prove to be a major security headache.

While excellent Mobile Device Management solutions are available, some business security software solutions include some MDM functionality.

The difference between standard MDM and security software MDM features should be considered, however. For example, a solution like Microsoft Defender for Enterprise includes protection for mobile and desktop devices. But this doesn’t include the more common features found in MDM tools. You won’t find asset management, inventory, application configuration, or device troubleshooting with SMB-level security tools with MDM features.

What you should find, and certainly expect, are malicious app blocking, intrusion detection, and remote resolution tools. Clearly, there is some crossover between MDM  and mobile security management features in SMB security tools. 

While evaluation of the best software is recommended, this is one area where there may be functional overlap. 

7. Password Protection 

What can password protection do to keep your business secure? 

Removing the use of weak passwords, and implementing rules to force secure passwords is the first step of password protection. While not typically associated with security software, password management is increasingly becoming integrated.

The importance of password security cannot be understated. As long as passcodes and strings are required (biometrics still rely on a master password), protection is required. This isn’t just for network access, or for emails; password protection should cover passwords for all purposes. Think beyond devices like PCs, laptops, phones, and tablets, and also consider software accounts.

Security suites targeting SMBs should include a password protection feature.

8. Cloud Dashboard and Remote Management Apps 

Off-site management of your business security tools should not be a desirable extra. This feature, which provides remote access to your solution’s cloud dashboard, should be baked into the software you choose.

Using a cloud-based dashboard means easy browser-based access to your business’s security solution. This can potentially be accessed and administered from anywhere, which is an advantage for distributed teams. It is also useful if your IT services are outsourced.

Remote management is a strong counterpart feature. While browser tools are popular on desktops, dedicated mobile apps are also an option. If the security software your SMB is considering includes cloud and remote management tools, take it to the evaluation stage.

9. VPN 

Large organizations typically use two VPNs (virtual private network). First will be the manually configured VPN that enables secure transfer of data between multiple sites. Second, the third-party VPN service enables flexible working for remote and temporary employees. This is typically used for private access to collaboration and project management tools, or third-party cloud storage.

For SMBs, setting up a manual VPN between properties is straightforward, but a third-party VPN is typically more flexible. Indeed, they boast features you won’t find in Windows 10 or 11’s built-in VPN tool. 

Business security software that offers a VPN is certainly worth considering. Even if it doesn’t, if your business isn’t already using a VPN service, it should be.

10. Ransomware Protection 

Finally, any security software solution you adopt for your business absolutely must include ransomware protection.

By encrypting data across a single device, location, server, or entire business, ransomware attackers hold a business to ransom. Some ransomware can even access cloud drives, potentially resulting in backups becoming similarly encrypted.

Without the decryption key, business data is lost.

Ransomware is perhaps the greatest risk facing small and medium businesses and enterprise-level operations and organizations alike. While ransomware attack attempts are decreasing from a 2021 high of 623.25 million to 317.59 million in 2023 (Statista), it is still a huge risk. The potential payday for a successful ransomware operation is in six or seven figures, depending on the target. 

As ransomware removal is difficult without the correct tools and encryption keys, mitigation is often unsuccessful. Alternatively, it can be deemed cheaper to pay up (perhaps after negotiation) than to spend money on decrypting files.

Any business security software that you plan to evaluate should have protection against ransomware.

Other Security Software Features for SMBs to Consider  

While your business security software should feature all 10 of the above tools, a handful of other features are useful. 

Patch Management

A significant portion of potential security issues are caused by zero-day vulnerabilities. These weaknesses can often be exploited before the vendor (Microsoft, Adobe, etc.) becomes aware of them. 

Patch management is a huge aspect of handling security issues. It’s not quite plugging the holes before the ship sinks; vulnerabilities can take time to exploit. While patch management might seem like a reaction, effective management and implementation of patches is a proactive solution. Every security issue you can think of (including ransomware) can be defended against with patch management.

SMB-level security software that handles patch management is unusual, however.

File Shredding

Sensitive documents regularly need to be removed from network storage. Whether this is due to unforeseen duplication, discarding old storage devices, or meeting GDPR or other data retention practices, simple deletion of most documents is not the answer.

Instead, full deletion using file shredding software should be employed. 

Basically the digital equivalent of a paper shredder, file shredder tools ensure complete destruction of data. Shredding leaves data unreadable, but rather than cutting it into strips, data is overwritten multiple times. This is necessary because data deleted in the usual way (say, Shift + Delete) can be “undeleted” with dedicated tools. Data shredding doesn’t just overwrite data, it replaces it with random data, which is then also overwritten.

(Note that there is a similar practice, data shredding, which physically shreds a hard drive or SSD.)

File shredding tools are commonplace across all types of security software and PC utilities. As such, you will probably find that this is a something included in the business security software suites you’re considering.

Escalation to Specialist

In-house SMB IT teams can be found handling everything from desktop support to dealing with device and service licensing. In most cases this dynamic works well, but what happens if there is a cyberattack or data security incident?

Where problems cannot be dealt with in-house, the answer is to bring in a specialist. While your IT colleagues may be capable of delivering a solution, a software specialist can typically resolve issues faster.

Escalation is expensive, however, which can prevent some issues from being dealt with. In-house teams tend to aim for easy fixes on a case-by-case basis, with larger issues left to senior specialists. While this might work for most situations, having the option to escalate to a specialist is good to have. If the software security solution you’re evaluating includes this as an option that suits your budget, it is worth using.

Remember, while these features are useful, they’re not “must-haves.” The 10 security features in the list above are the ones every SMB needs.

EDTR Solutions Are for Enterprise, not SMBs 

EDTR (Endpoint Detection and Threat Response) is the overarching title given to software that handles all of the above. In fact, EDTR usually squeezes in more (perhaps local hosting and enhanced support), charging a monthly per-device subscription.

SMBs typically don’t have the budget for this level of security, which is why business security software needs careful selection. 

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a $16.5 million penalty against cybersecurity giant Avast, and also imposed a ban on the company from selling users’ browsing data for advertising purposes.

The FTC accused Avast of violating the privacy rights of millions of consumers by collecting, storing and selling their browsing data without consent, misleading them about the protective capabilities of the company’s products.

The complaint revealed that Avast’s subsidiary, Jumpshot, had amassed over 8PB (or around 8,200TB) of browsing information dating back to at least 2014, involving unique identifiers, timestamps, device information and user location.

Avast fined for collecting users’ browsing data

The Commission disclosed that Avast has harvested users’ browsing information using browser extensions and antivirus software since at least 2014, storing it indefinitely and selling it on to over 100 third parties through Jumpshot up until 2020.

The report reveals that Avast failed to inform users that their detailed, re-identifiable browsing data was being sold, despite promising protection against third-party tracking.

The company’s deceptive practices came to light in December 2019, when Mozilla removed four of the company’s own browser extensions due to privacy concerns. Mozilla’s decision ultimately spurred subsequent investigations, leading to the FTC’s intervention.

As well as the $16.5 million fine, Avast has also been prohibited from licensing or selling browsing data collected through its products for advertising purposes. The company is now required to obtain explicit permission before selling non-Avast product browsing data.

The FTC has also mandated the cybersecurity company to inform affected users about the sanctions.

An Avast spokesperson commented: “While we disagree with the FTC’s allegation and characterization of the facts, we are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to continuing to serve our millions of customers around the world.”

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Avast has confirmed that its antivirus SDK labeled the Google Android app as malicious on certain Chinese smartphones. 

In an announcement, the security giant said its software flagged the Google Quick Search Box app launcher as malware by mistake.

The Avast SDK powers the Huawei Optimizer app, conceding that "its antivirus Software Development Kit (SDK) for Android was incorrectly flagging the Google Quick Search Box as malware on Huawei phones. This SDK delivers the antivirus component of Huawei's Optimizer app."

Google Trojan?

The issue was only seen on Huawei devices outside of China, as well as a "small number" of Honor and Vivo devices, the company said, adding that, "A fix was implemented on October 30th which fully resolved the issue." 

"We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused," Avast added.

On October 29th, it was reported to Avast that its antivirus Software Development Kit (SDK) for Android was incorrectly flagging the Google Quick Search Box as malware on Huawei phones. This SDK delivers the antivirus component of Huawei’s Optimizer app, a device management application that also provides clean-up and performance features. 

Users had flocked to forums and social media platforms to report a number of Chinese-built smartphones displaying a strange warning claiming that the Google Android app is malicious and should be immediately deleted.

Reports have claimed some Huawei, Honor, and Vivo smartphones and tablets are all displaying a “security threat” alert, detecting the Google app as “TrojanSMS-PA”.

The details for the warning elaborated that the app is secretly sending SMS messages and could cause material damage to the user: "This app was detected sending SMS privately, enticing users to pay with adult content, downloading/installing apps privately, or stealing private information, which may cause property damage and privacy leakage," the warning read. "We recommend uninstalling it immediately."

Google quickly responded, saying it had nothing to do with the warnings and that the users should discuss the issue with the affected device vendors. 

Via BleepingComputer

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Technical security vulnerabilities represent only part of the risks in the online world. Unfortunately, in the security chain, humans are often the weakest link; social engineering is the practice of taking advantage of people’s natural vulnerabilities to carry out malicious acts. 

Cyber criminals rely on interpersonal manipulation and deliberately exploit character traits and emotions such as helpfulness, trust, fear, or respect for authority to feign a personal relationship with the victim. In this way, cybercriminals entice their victims to disclose sensitive information, make bank transfers or install malware on their private PC or in their employer's corporate network.

Why is it important to strengthen human centric digital safety?

Traditionally, the focus of cyber security has primarily been on closing technical security gaps. We are making progress every day in optimising our technologies to defend our customers against cyberattacks. However, those threats that directly target people – such as social engineering threats – are still massively neglected. Other examples include cyberbullying, life-threatening Internet challenges, the spread of fake news, and undesirable side-effects of personalisation algorithms. 

The consequences are severe: in the UK 4 in 10 children aged 8-17 (39%) are reported to have experienced bullying, either on or offline, with 84% of the bullying more likely to happen on a device than face-to-face (61%). Damage amounting to a staggering £2.3 billion was caused to the British economy by cyberattacks in 2022, and research by AAG found that 82% of breaches against businesses were a result of issues relating to human error or social engineering. On top of this comes the influencing of not only people, but institutions and nations, such as the swaying of elections and politics through fake news and deep fakes.

This is where Human-Centric Digital Safety (HCDS) becomes an increasingly important lever for making the internet a safer place. Through this approach, we focus on the “human factor” of digital safety by creating technical tools to aid and protect people in difficult situations.

Why is it that cybersecurity companies like Avast can successfully combat HCDS threats?

There are several good reasons why cybersecurity companies should be committed to HCDS. For Avast in particular, the main reason is probably our independence. First, we are completely committed to helping keep our users as secure online as possible – we are experts in that. So, we don't have to worry about engagement rates or advertisers, as is the case with the big e-commerce or social media platforms. In addition, we can rely on anonymized data from more than 500 million customers worldwide. 

This means that our Threat Labs can identify specific patterns of fraud across several networks and misinformation at an early stage and quickly protect our users. In addition, our customers benefit from the expertise and experience we have gained over the years in combating cyberattacks, so that we can regularly provide them with sensible and easy-to-implement rules of conduct to protect themselves against social engineering. And who can better combat online threats of all kinds and inform people about them than those who deal with it every day?

How can artificial intelligence (AI) protect against social engineering?

Personalization algorithms or deep fakes have shown that some dangers on the internet are essentially based on artificial intelligence. But AI can also successfully help fight cybercrime. For example, tremendous advances in the field of natural language understanding by computers make it possible to automatically explain why a certain message is likely a scam, detect toxic or coercive conversations, or verify that a claim is not true based on trustworthy evidence.

In the future, this could be used increasingly to combat fake news or hate speech on social media platforms, for example. Algorithms are constantly improving their ability to derive complex emotional states. Therefore, AI could be used in future to automatically explain why a certain message is a scam, to detect toxic or coercive conversations or to verify that a claim is not true based on trustworthy evidence. AI systems now perform such tasks even better than systems that still rely on human decisions.

With this in mind, AI offers various solutions to protect against social engineering, helping us manage a sheer mass of digital threats whose distribution is amplified by automatic text and image generators. What's more, AI can keep up with the pace of the Internet. YouTube videos go viral within hours, generating clicks in the millions; AI systems can scan comment columns quickly, efficiently, and reliably for problematic content.

Progress is also being made in communication with users. So far, we have only been able to warn them in the case of technical threats like malware, but not when it comes to pure HCDS threats, chatbots are getting better and better at carefully explaining these threats to the users.

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For over 35 years Avast has been researching and developing security software, so when they say they have a solution for endpoint protection we should all pay attention.

Their continued development of the almighty AVG Antivirus alone is enough to make us sit up, but when we discovered the Avast Business Hub we were keen to put it through its paces. After all, a standalone virus scanner on one machine is very different to proactively scanning and configuring multiple devices against all threats. 

Have Avast done it again with Avast Premium Business Security and produced one of the best endpoint protection software platforms - or should they stay out of business cybersecurity solutions? Find out below.

Avast Premium Business Security: Plans

There are 3 main tiers to Avast Business Security. The 'Essential' plan includes all the perks you'd expect to see including an online management platform for all devices. It also includes Avast's Firewall, Ransomware Shield, Remote Access Shield, and network discovery tools for protecting devices from intruders and malware.

We were especially intrigued by the 'Password Protection' feature, which seems to regulate which apps can access stored browser passwords in users' %LocalAppData%\ folders.

Essential subscribers also benefit from the 'Real Site', feature which is designed to protect users from DNS hijacking, by establishing encrypted connections from their device to process DNS queries. 

Avast Premium Business Security includes all of the above, as well as a built-in personal VPN to protect employees' on public WiFi. Click here for our in-depth review of Avast's 'SecureLine' VPN service.

We were also impressed to see the Premium tier includes USB protection, meaning that employees can't use unauthorized removable storage devices. (N.B Both these 'Premium' features are not available for macOS).

Avast 'Ultimate' Business Security includes all the features of the 'Essential' and 'Premium' Tiers as well as system application and patching to automatically fix vulnerabilities. This requires access to Avast's Business Hub. The company have put together a helpful YouTube video explaining how it works. 

All Avast Business Security plans include 24/5 English support via e-mail, chat or phone.

Avast Premium Business Security: Pricing

No matter which tier you subscribe to, billing is done on a per device, per year basis. (Options exist for 2 and 3 year subscriptions at a reduced rate too).

Avast are currently offering a 20% discount on their rates. This means price start from as little as $24.15 per year for one device on the 'Essential' plan, assuming you're happy to pay upfront for a 3-year subscription.

This increases to up to $45.42 per device per year for Avast Ultimate Business Security, assuming five devices over a one year subscription. 

The Avast Business Security main page has an excellent pricing section where you can input your number of devices and desired subscription length. 

Avast Premium Business Security: Setup

If you head over to the Avast Small Business Solutions page, there's an option for a 30-day free trial of their Avast Business Security products. In theory this simply involves filling in a form with your personal information (including business e-mail address and phone number), then wait for a download link to your inbox.

After 3 tries completing the form, the e-mail failed to materialize so we got in touch with Avast's sales team, who pointed us to a helpful download link for their software. We later found out the quickest way to get started is just to sign up via https://businesshub.avast.com/, then subscribe for a trial version of Avast Business Security. (We choose the 'Premium' tier for this article). 

We were then able to go to the 'Devices' tab and clicked '+' to create a custom installer. As we'd chosen a trial of the Premium tier by default the agent software not only included Antivirus but Avast's VPN and USB protection feature.

The install window began the process, then helpfully told us we could close the window as the install process would continue in the background. We found this a little disconcerting as there was no system tray icon for the agent but were relieved to see the Antivirus was still installing via the Avast Business Hub. 

Avast Premium Business Security: Features

Since the Premium Business Security platform was created by one of the world's leading antivirus developers, its touted anti-malware features are very impressive. 

Avast have released an extensive whitepaper on these features but chiefly this involves using Avast 'Cloud Protection' to automatically deploy protection across the entire user base when a threat's detected. Their cloud-based file scanner 'CyberCapture' despite it's 90's-sounding name detects suspicious files using modern techniques like behavior analytics and machine learning.

As we mentioned, 'Premium' subscribers can not only add antivirus to the agent software but VPN, a firewall and USB protection. The software also incorporates a 'Mail Shield' which works with email clients like Microsoft Outlook to scan for threats. The integrated 'Sandbox' also allows users to browse the web or run applications safely in a standalone environment. 

This and other tools can be configured via the Avast Business Hub, though when we explored the agent software itself we were pleased to see extra privacy-enhancing features such as webcam shield, a tool for restricting access to browser's password vaults and even a file shredder for securely erasing data. 

When we logged in, we were impressed to see Avast also offers  'Web Control', to prevent users from visiting unauthorized sites. We tried to find more information about this new feature but had no joy. We can only assume this is a form of DNS filtering, though as the feature's still in beta we don't recommend using it for any mission-critical endpoints. It's also not clear why this has been touted as a separate product instead of simply adding a whitelist/blacklist to the existing 'Real Site' feature. 

Avast Premium Business Security: Interface

Endpoints are managed by the 'Business Hub' dashboard. This is actually quite spartan but in a good way. The first items on the agenda are any listed alerts, as well as how many threats have been found in the past 14 days.

The dashboard also lists the number of protected devices, as well as active subscriptions. (In the case of the 'Premium' tier these are for Antivirus, VPN and USB protection).

The left hand pane contains clearly marked sections such as 'Policies', 'Reports' and 'Users' where you can view more information on each. Like the dashboard, the emphasis is on providing an overview of the information, whereupon users can find more details by clicking on the relevant section.

Much the same is true for the agent software, which is usually nestled into the system tray on Windows. However, upon opening there are easy to follow sections such as 'Protection' from where you can run various scans. The icons to launch specific tools like 'Quarantine' and the 'Sandbox' are laid out in a grid format, which is very easy to follow. 

Avast Premium Business Security: Performance

For our tests we attempted to download a test computer virus onto our machine, provided by the good people of EICAR. 

When we loaded the web page in Microsoft Edge, we were very impressed to see that when we clicked on the link to download the virus directly, Avast's agent software automatically aborted the connection, so the virus wasn't downloaded.

We next downloaded the virus in compressed (ZIP) format. The agent software didn't prevent this but immediately as we extracted the files it detected and quarantined the virus.

After running our tests we logged in to the Avast Business Hub only to be told that there were no threats detected and that zero threats were found in the past 14 days. We decided to visit the 'Reports' section to view an 'Antivirus Threat Report'. Again this concluded that no threats had been found.

In fairness our test virus didn't constitute a real threat to the device but other endpoint security platforms did include it in their dashboards and/or detailed reports. 

Against our better judgment our next test was to download a real computer virus we'd caught in the wild onto the test machine. Avast's agent software detected and quarantined it immediately, prompting us to restart the machine. 

After this, once we logged into the Avast Business Hub we found alerts both for the new (real) virus and the previous (fake) virus. We attempted to trigger a virus scan on our test machine remotely from the hub but it failed to start. Luckily there were no issues when we initiated the scan from the test machine itself. 

Avast Premium Business Security: Final verdict

It's always best to begin with the bad news and that is the agent software for Avast Business Security doesn't seem to extend to mobile devices. That said, if you want a solution that takes minutes to set up on just business computers you can do far worse than this platform.

The Business Hub dashboard is well laid out, providing simple to follow overviews which can be viewed in more detail later on. Although our test virus file wasn't reported at first, we have put this down to a glitch as it did appear in a later report when we tested with another virus.

The pricing plan is easy to follow and competitive. We were also impressed by some of the extras in the 'Premium' tier like VPN and the ability to restrict access only to authorized USB devices.

No payment information is required to sign up for the free trial and unlike other platforms we've reviewed, the agent software is very easy to remove so you've nothing to lose by test-piloting Avast Premium Business Security.

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Cybersecurity firm Avast has identified a spike in the number of dangerous websites trying to gather user data ahead of the upcoming Champions League final, and has issued a warning to all football fans and Internet users in general to exercise a cautious approach.

Match days, particularly around kick-off time, and the Champions League final are all being highlighted as key times when attackers are expected to target vulnerable users.

Avast Malware Analysis Lead, David Jursa, said: “As we know, cybercriminals capitalize on human emotions - and the desire of fans to watch their team play in the Champions League is a strong one.”

Champions League cyberattacks

Capitalizing on fans’ willingness to trawl the Internet for free and often dodgy streaming platforms to watch their chosen game, attackers will use any combination of popups, phishing sites, malvertising, and other scams to get hold of personal data.

While the most sensible solution would be to legally and legitimately stream games or turn to live TV, Avast has shared information about some of the most common hacks to help users protect their sensitive information.

One such hack is the requirement to download streaming software to watch the match, which turns out to be malware designed to infect a host computer. They may also ask for information such as email addresses, phone numbers, and even card details. 

Spanish football fans are said to be most at risk, with a 154% increase in attacks observed compared with France at 93% and Italy at 67%. The UK and Germany round up the top five, at 39% and 35% respectively.

While huge global hits like the Champions League are catalysts for cybercrime, such attacks are not isolated. Beyond other sporting events, ruthless cyberattackers will capitalize on any event they see fit.

With millions of loyal Apple fans also expected to tune in to its WWDC event next week to take their first look at the company’s new operating systems, yet another high-risk environment presents itself as Internet users are being urged to remain vigilant.

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Cybercriminals are always on the prowl for new targets, and unsecured devices are easy pickings or low-hanging fruit. Having the right security protection is vital, but with so many options on the market today, how do you know which is right for you?

Avast One Essential looks to be your all-in-one online guardian, offering everything you need to stay safe in the face of ever-changing cyberthreats. Far from just your standard antivirus, Avast One Essential looks to offer a range of tools aimed at helping keep you protected - and for a price you won't believe.

Security often used to just mean an antivirus, but Avast One Essential goes beyond that with its protective platform.

Users will get on-demand scans and real-time protection against viruses and other malware, blocking threats before they have a chance to infiltrate your device. Avast can rely on its widespread intelligence network, which utilises the latest information on threats faced by other Avast users around the world, helps bolster its protection, keeping you safer from the very latest cyberthreats.

All of this is backed up by an advanced firewall and cookie tracker blocker that helps keep you safe and private when browsing online, meaning you can shop and bank more safely, even when using public Wi-Fi networks that may lack the proper protection. The platform's connection and network advisor tools are able to recommend when you might be connecting to a dodgy network, helping keep your data protected.

To help make sure your browsing also stays safe from prying eyes, Avast One Essential includes a VPN to disguise what sites and pages you visit. Covering 5GB of traffic a week, the VPN will also help secure the data you send and receive over Wi-Fi connections without affecting your browsing speed, giving an added bonus for those who might be on the move a lot.

The platform of Avast is also able to scan known data breaches for compromised passwords, flagging any issues for those of us who might still re-use the same logins across multiple accounts.

Avast One Essential works across Windows, Mac, Android and iOS, meaning you can ensure all your smartphone and PC devices remain secure, even though not all features are available on all operating systems or platforms.

So how much will all this set you back? You might think that, given the wide range of tools and services included, Avast One Essential will be a drain on your wallet - but you'd be wrong. All this is provided free of charge - that's right, you won't have to spend a single penny to keep your defences up.

If this sounds like the ideal addition, then check out all the details around Avast One Essential here.

The first few months of 2023 saw 40% more phishing and smishing attacks compared to the same period last year, new research has claimed.

The Avast Q1 2023 Threat Report notes that attacks where threat actors impersonate big brands and claim the victim is due a refund have become the most popular.

This type of phishing was up 26% in the UK  compared to Q4 2022, with one particular scam that used emails claiming victims can get a refund for a parcel that was never delivered seeing a major rise.

Phishing threat

The emails would also contain attachments which, if downloaded and run, would trigger the download of an infostealer, such as RedLine. 

To deliver the infostealer, the attackers would distribute a Microsoft OneNote file, or Adobe Acrobat Sign file. With the former, the file would hold an add-on that could trigger the download of the malware. With the latter, the legitimate service gets abused to deliver a link hosting the malicious program, for the victims to download.

In any case, the researchers found, the goal is to steal as much personally identifiable information as possible, as this data can later be used for identity theft.

“If you think your data has no value then why would scammers spend so much time trying to steal your data if it’s worthless? The truth is that anyone can be affected and it is important to stay vigilant and use proper protection,” said Jakub Kroustek, Avast Malware Research Director. 

“Unfortunately, scammers have made it nearly impossible to take any message as face value – all communications, whether seemingly from a friend, boss, or household brand, have potential to be fraudulent.”

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Cybersecurity and antivirus company Avast has been hit with a €13.7 million ($14.9 million) fine for processing customers’ data illegally as per GDPR requirements.

Spanish not-for-profit NGO Facua, which focuses on consumer rights matters, made Spain’s Agency for Data Protection aware that Avast had collected and sold private browsing data, including identifying data, without knowledge or authorization.

Facua credits PCMag and Motherboard for first bringing the matter to public attention, which saw Avast wrongly handling personal data under its subsidiary, Jumpshot.

Avast GDPR fine

Data packaged by Jumpshot from companies like Google, Microsoft, Yelp, Home Depot, Sephora, Loreal, and more, was sold on the pretense that it could “provide companies with a more complete view of the entire online user journey” (via Facua).

The NGO highlights some of the data that was collected by Avast, including Google Maps location searches and GPS coordinates, videos viewed on YouTube, profiles on LinkedIn, and even more broadly, Google web searches.

Having transferred the case to the Czech Republic, the Czech Administration has ruled that Avast has committed a number of violations against the GDPR relating to processing personal data, “failing to sufficiently inform the data subjects (users of the Avast antivirus program and its browser extension) at the time the data was obtained from them, about the purposes of the treatment for which they were intended and on the legal basis of the treatment in question.”

A Gen spokesperson told TechRadar Pro on behalf of Avast:

"Avast closed down Jumpshot in January 2020, and with this terminated the processing of customer data by Jumpshot, as stated in the blogpost. The Czech DPA investigation relates to the historic processing of personal data before January 2020. The Czech DPA started its investigations in February 2020, and till today, the proceedings are still ongoing, a final decision has not been issued yet. Therefore, we cannot provide any comments.  

Since January 2020, Avast reaffirmed its commitment to taking all necessary steps to keep its users’ data safe and private. Avast swiftly closing down Jumpshot demonstrates how seriously it has taken this situation. Avast has continued to take proactive measures to ensure that its privacy practices are a top priority and maintains active participation in global privacy-first organizations and initiatives, including partnering with industry-leading privacy advisors such as TrustArc through which Avast earned the TRUSTe privacy certification, and working closely with OneTrust and the Future of Privacy Forum."

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The threat of stalkerware has increased by more than threefold over the past three years, new figures from Avast have claimed.

The company’s Threat Researchers department, part of the Coalition Against Stalkerware, revealed that, based on its telemetry, the possibility of encountering this form of mobile malware increased 329% since 2020. 

Avast describes stalkerware as a “form of tech abuse” in which the attacker “steals the physical and online freedom of the targeted person” by tracking their location and monitoring their smartphone activity without the victim’s knowledge or consent. Through stalkerware, they’re able to keep tabs on the phone calls the victims are making, the text messages they’re exchanging, and the websites they’re visiting.

Huge concern

"The growth we’re seeing in stalkerware is a huge concern,” said Jakub Vavra, Threat Operations Analyst at Avast. “Stalkerware is often installed secretly on mobile phones by abusive spouses, ex-partners, so-called friends or concerned parents, and has the capacity to inflict serious physical and psychological harm on those affected. This is not only about stealing personal data, there are also tangible implications concerning the safety of the individual targeted.”

Most commonly, stalkerware imitates benign apps such as notes, calculators, or similar. That way they’re able to stay hidden in plain sight, with the victims seeing the apps every day on their phone and not knowing their true purpose. They’re often advertised as apps used to keep a close eye on children and other people that are unable to take care of themselves. Other times, they’re advertised as apps for tracking lost or stolen devices. 

“Stalkerware is an invasive monitoring tool abusers use to perpetrate stalking, harassment, and other forms of violence and abuse. National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) is deeply concerned about the significant increase in the use of stalkerware and the dangerous implications for survivors domestic and dating violence and sexual assault,” said Erica Olsen, Senior Director of Safety Net Project at NNEDV. “Our Safety Net Project conducted an assessment of service providers documenting that the most common types of technology abuse – harassment, limiting access to tech, and surveillance – all increased during the pandemic. We are grateful for Gen’s partnership and dedication to addressing stalkerware and survivor safety.”

The best way to make sure your devices aren’t sporting any stalkerware is to go through all of the apps installed on the device and make sure they all work as intended. If the phone suddenly drops in performance, or starts crashing and freezing for no apparent reason, there could be a stalkerware app hiding somewhere. Also, Avast says that if suddenly you have a new browser homepage, new icons on your desktop, or a different default search engine, it might be a good time to scan the phone.

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Cybersecurity giant Avast has published its Q4 2022 Threat Report, taking a close look at the type of scams targeting vulnerable users. 

Some of the most notable scam types included social engineering which exposes human error, like refund and invoice fraud tactics, as well as supposed tech support scams. Lottery-themed adware campaigns remained just as prevalent, as they have done in previous quarters.

Besides scams, the company noted a pair of zero-day exploits in Chrome and Windows, which have since been patched, highlighting the importance for users to keep software up-to-date.

Popular email scams

Avast Malware Research Director Jakub Kroustek explained that cybercriminals accredit a large proportion of their success to human nature, which sees us reacting with urgency, fear, and trying to regain control of issues.

Kroustek’s advice is: “When people face surprising pop-up messages or emails, we recommend they stay calm and take a moment to think before they act.”

An alarming increase in refund and invoice fraud was noted during the final months of 2022 leading up to Christmas, which saw fooled users given malicious actors control to their screen and online banking. Instead of calling the number on the scam email, unsure users may want to head directly to the platform’s website and use a number that they’re sure of.

Data theft also occurred in several lottery-type popups, as well as the Arkei information stealer which saw a staggering 437% increase. Arkei is known for stealing information from browsers’ autofill forms, among other sources.

Finally, a pair of zero-day exploits were found in Google Chrome and Windows. Avast says that both companies were notified and reacted promptly, helping to minimize risk to users.

• All this talk of scams got you worried? Try one of the best firewalls or use the best ID theft protection tools

A significant numbers small and medium-sized businesses have suffered a ransomware attack in the past 12 months, new stats from cybersecurity experts Avast are showing. 

The company recently polled 1,000 SMBs and found 26% having fallen victim to the dreaded cybercrime. Of that number, almost half (47%) decided to pay the ransom demand in order to get their data, and access to their endpoints, back. 

Despite paying the demands, the fallout is still painful - four in ten (41%) lost valuable data in the process, while a third (34%) lost access to their devices. 

Backing up sensitive data

The silver lining in the report is that awareness about cybersecurity is relatively high. Roughly half (48%) of the surveyed businesses perceive cyberattacks as their biggest threats, followed by physical security (35%) and supply chain issues (33%). Most firms (69%) believe they have enough information to protect themselves against such attacks, and 76% said they have already “taken measures” in that respect. Although, they’d love to get more support from the government. 

Backing up data seems to be on top of everyone’s agenda, as 63% of the surveyed firms do it at least once a week.

Avast also asked the respondents about the effects of the Russo-Ukrainian war on cybersecurity, and got quite interesting results. 

As it turns out, the war acted as a proper catalyst for cyber-warfare, with 68% of SMBs now being more concerned about cyberattacks than before the invasion. In fact, they got so worried about cybersecurity that they upped their spending on cyber-insurance, despite rising costs across the board. 

“The results from this survey highlight the problem, particularly in connection with ransomware which large portions of the small business population are ill-equipped to handle. They often wind-up paying ransoms without any guarantees they’ll get their data back. This is the saddest situation, but the good news is that unlike larger organisations, small businesses can be quick, agile and take advantage of a lack of bureaucracy to plan ahead before a crisis occurs,” comments Lindsey Pyle, Vice President of Strategy at Avast Business. 

“SMBs need to utilise these strengths to get prepared and to get a plan in place, which at the bare minimum should include implementing online and offline backups, installing an antivirus, setting up network monitoring and ensuring an automated patching regime is established.”

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Looking for the best malware removal? You've come to the right place. Malware and virus infections are every day occurrences, but that doesn't mean all hope is lost.

Malware removal tools are highly capable at identifying and quarantining active attacks and can save your device from the dumpster.

Our team of experts have been using malware removal tools professionally and at home for decades, and we make sure that each tool on this list follows our strict rating criteria. We frequently retest each tool to check detection rates, compatibility, extra features, and cost.

There are free malware removal tools on the market too, but that might not have the same capabilities as their premium counterparts. In order to prevent infections in the future, why not take a look at the best antivirus software.

The Best Malware Removal of 2026 in Full:

The best malware removal overall

Malwarebytes is updated daily, so you can trust it to identify and remove new threats the minute they appear.

The first time you install Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, you’re given a 14-day trial of the premium edition, which includes preventative tools like real-time scanning and specific protection from ransomware. After two weeks, it reverts to the basic free version. This has to be activated manually, but is still a top-notch security tool. We recommend running it at least once a week to check for any nasties that you haven't noticed, or if you notice that your web browser has suddenly started acting strangely (likely a result of adware).

The app also includes the Browser Guard extension (for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari) that protects you from phishing scams, blocks annoying ads, and tracker and more. It’ll also review the security settings of your operating system, and can check if credentials associated with your email address have been leaked as part of a known data breach.. Malwarebytes Premium starts at $7/year for the personal edition, and goes all the way up to $ 799.99/year for protecting 20 devices.

Malwarebytes also offers AdwCleaner, which targets and removes annoying programs that hijack your browser by changing your homepage, resetting your default search engine, or adding unwanted toolbars. It’s also available for free, and along with Anti-Malware, is a great addition to your security toolkit.

Read our full Malwarebytes Anti-Malware review.

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Best malware removal for detection rates

Avast offers one of the most competent internet protection suites out there. While the company is famous for providing free antivirus software, it's worth noting that this now comes bundled with an anti-malware feature that uses behavioral monitoring to spot rogue programs.

What's even better is that not only are Avast's basic products free, but they are also available for mobile devices as well as for desktops, which makes Avast a particular ideal choice if you have multiple devices you need to check. The app can also optionally install the free Avast Secure Browser with built-in protection from online ads, phishing scams, and more.

While the basic Avast service is second-to-none, the company also provides paid-for anti-malware software that includes things, such as fine-tuning your PC to run better, to anti-ransomware software and secure file shredding.

For business users, there are paid-for internet security options to cover a range of needs and options.

For home users, though, the Avast free antivirus should keep your PC very well protected, though do note you'll be periodically prompted to update for one of Avast's other services.

Both the Premium (phishing protection, and more) and Ultimate (VPN, and more) versions can protect up to 10 devices. They cost $69.48 the first year, following which Premium renews at $99.99/year and Ultimate at $139.99/year.

Read our full Avast antivirus review.

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Best malware removal for money value

Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security is a very capable package that's easy to use with above average anti-spam and an effective ‘Folder Shield’ module to block ransomware. And, it seems to get better as time goes on.

How good is it exactly? The top testing labs all rate it highly for protection, even though there’s a bit of disagreement on the details. In particular, AV-Comparatives says it gives a high number of false positives, which could be a real nuisance. On the other hand, AV-Test reports high levels of accuracy and no issues with false positives at all.

Our experiences with the product is that protection levels look similar to Bitdefender, false positives are only marginally higher, and the system itself doesn't slow down our system noticeably more than anything else.

Standout features include ransomware protection, advanced AI learning, email scam safeguarding, and Pay Guard to protect financial transactions. It costs $19.95/year for one Windows computer. The app also includes a free browser extension (for Chrome, Edge, Firefox) that can block ads, protects against phishing attacks, and more.

We'd recommend running the trial for its full 30 days before you buy, then, to see if you notice any problems. But if you're unaffected, its high levels of detection and excellent bonus features make Trend Micro a good choice.

Read our full Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security review.

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Best malware removal for ease of use

F-Secure Internet Security is a great collection of antivirus tools, and while it's a bit pricier than some of the other antivirus software on this best of list, the number of features you get certainly makes that high price tag worthwhile.

With F-Secure Internet Security, you get the brilliant antivirus software from F-Secure, alongside banking protection for safe online shopping, a password manager, an unlimited VPN, and a device finder that lets you track your lost Android or iOS device, and if needs be, remotely lock or wipe it as well.

The package typically receives maximum marks for protection from AV-Test, and generally scores highly with AV-Comparatives. They also say it can generate significantly more false positives than most of the competition, but how that affects you will vary depending on how you use your computer.

The interface is a major advantage, as it's extremely easy to use, lightweight, and for the most part, you can just leave the app to work alone looking after your PC. The program has minimal effect on your system performance, and if you do need to intervene, you can generally solve any issues in a couple of clicks.

Available for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, F-Secure Internet Security remains an appealing package: fast, lightweight, and able to run alongside many other security tools without conflict. Standout features include banking protection, and ransomware protection.

F-Secure Internet Security costs $49.99/year for one device, or $89.99 for two years. To protect three devices, you’ll need to pay $64.99/year, or $114.99 for two years. Similarly, for up to five devices, the app costs $69.99/year or $124.99 for two years. Helpfully, there’s a 30-day free trial to help you explore all the nooks and crannies of the app.

Read our full F-Secure review.

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Best free malware removal

Best free malware removal overall

Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition is a straightforward security tool that offers essential protection without the complexity or clutter of a full security suite. Designed primarily for Windows users, you can use the free edition to protect up to three devices.

The app is very user friendly as it has a minimalistic interface, and an efficient background scanning engine. In fact, simplicity is one of Bitdefender Free’s strengths. The interface is clean and the software requires little to no user intervention after installation. It scans files automatically, blocks suspicious activity in real time, and keeps out of the way unless a threat is detected.

In terms of malware protection, the free edition performs well since it shares the same core technology and signatures found in Bitdefender’s paid products, which is a definite plus.

On the downside, the free edition doesn’t have features, such as a firewall, a VPN, ransomware file recovery, secure browsing tools, and more, which are reserved for Bitdefender’s paid products.

Overall, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition is a strong option for anyone who wants a set-it-and-forget-it style antivirus with solid malware protection and minimal hassle, backed by a trusted name in the antivirus market.

Read our full Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition review.

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Best free malware removal for feature variety

The Avira Free Security Suite provides one of the most comprehensive free security packages available on the internet.

As well as providing the standard anti-virus protection, the Avira Free security suite also provides a software updater, as well as scanning your network for vulnerabilities and helps you fix them.

There are also safe browsing and safe shopping options, as well as a system optimizer to speed up your PC which is normally charged for in other packages.

If that's not enough, there's also a free VPN included for up to 500 MB per month, as well as a password manager (although we recommend using the best password manager for more advanced features) and privacy settings manager.

However, you actually have a choice of which features you want to install. This is a great plus as while the Avira suite is generous some users may want to run one or more features through a different suite.

There is an upgrade option, of course, but this is priced toward installation across 5, or 25 devices, and involves such features such as removing the VPN limit.

If there's one negative, it's that there's no anti-ransomware protection, but aside from that the Avira Free Security Suite is a very generous package indeed.

Read our full Avira antivirus review.

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Best free malware removal for configuration

Backed by Avast, AVG Antivirus Free blends strong malware detection with a sleek, approachable interface that caters well to non-technical users. The app provides real-time protection against viruses, and other forms of malware.

Scans are reasonably fast, and it offers several of these including deep scans, USB scans, and performance scans. The performance scan though mainly functions as a teaser for its paid cleanup tool as many of the fixes it suggests require upgrading.

AVG also includes web and email protection. It blocks dangerous links in browsers, warns about unsafe websites, and scans incoming and outgoing emails for malware.

The paid-for Pro model has more security options - it has more robust download protection, offers data encryption and includes a firewall - but the free version offers decent protection for most PC users. Most importantly though since AVG and Avast share backend technology, choosing between them often comes down to personal preference.

Read our full AVG Antivirus Free review.

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Best free malware removal for portability

Most security software tries to stop malware and spyware getting onto your system. Emsisoft Emergency Kit doesn't: it's the 911 call of security software, the app you use when your PC's been poked by something unpleasant.

Unlike traditional antivirus programs that run continuously in the background, Emsisoft Emergency Kit is entirely portable. The installation process actually just uncompressed it to a folder, which can be either on the local disk, or a portable USB one. Then you run the scanner manually. This makes the app especially useful for cleaning computers that are already compromised or sluggish due to malware.

The interface is minimal and utilitarian, and provides Quick, Malware, and Custom scan options. Once a scan is complete, you can quarantine or delete the detected threats.

However, because it lacks real-time protection, scheduled scans, or automatic updates, the Emergency Kit is not a replacement for a primary antivirus solution. It also requires users to manually update the malware definitions, which can be a limitation if you're using it offline.

Read our full Emsisoft Emergency Kit review.

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Best free malware removal for ease of use

Spybot Search & Destroy Free Edition is a long-standing anti-malware tool that specializes in detecting spyware, adware, and other privacy-invasive threats. A popular option in the early 2000s, Spybot has since evolved to include broader protection tools, though its core functionality in the free version remains focused on manual detection and removal of malware.

The Free Edition of Spybot is intended as a supplement to your main antivirus program, rather than a complete security solution. It doesn’t offer real-time protection, automatic updates, or full antivirus capabilities. These capabilities are reserved for its paid versions.

When you install the program for the first time, it asks you whether you want to manually adjust the settings or let the software automatically configure its settings. This flexibility is great for both beginners and experienced users.

One of its signature features, the Immunization module, modifies browser settings to prevent your system from accessing thousands of malicious or tracking websites.

Note however that the last stable release of the app was back in 2021, and though there have been several incremental releases since, Spybot Search and Destroy isn’t as regularly updated as its peers.

Read our full Spybot Search & Destroy review.

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We've also reviewed the best photo storage and sharing sites and the best free backup software.

Honorable mentions

There are many vendors offering solutions to keep cyberattackers at bay, so that means there are a plethora of malware removal services to choose from. With that in mind, we took a look at many more tools than the ones listed above.

Here are a few other honorable mentions that we tested and are worth considering:

• ZoneAlarm Anti-Ransomware: Malware comes in many forms and ransomware is one of the most devastating. ZoneAlarm Anti-Ransomware focuses on this particular problem, detecting and eliminating ransomware attacks. It was even able to restore some of our files affected by ransomware during the detection period.
• Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus: One of Webroot's major strengths is its size. It consumes hardly any system resources because it is primarily cloud-based. Webroot monitors unknown programs, virtualizes their actions so they can’t make permanent changes and decides based on that whether it's malware or not.
• ESET NOD32: This may not be the cheapest malware removal tool on the market, nor the most user-friendly, but we did find that it delivered excellent detection results. It also works across multiple devices, with the Security Home Essential plan (starting at $59.99/year) allowing you to protect three devices per account.
• Fortect: Although primarily a PC optimizer, Fortect also does a pretty good job at removing malware. It searches for and removes malware slowing your computer down and can even alert users if malware appears in newly downloaded files in real-time.

Best malware removal FAQs

How to choose the best malware removal tool for you

Our key buying criteria

Budget

Malware removal tools come in different grades. Some are free while others cost money. Among the paid ones, some are more expensive than others. Ensure you pick one that suits your budget.

For example, if you’re a student with a tight budget, there are many free or affordable malware programs you can choose from. On the other hand, if you’re a corporate worker entitled to a considerable security budget, it’s wise to pick more expensive and sophisticated software. It’s even more important for the latter because you might be handling sensitive data that’s worth a lot to your employer; being infected by malware can cause considerable damage for corporate employees, so it’s worth it to invest in a good removal program.

Effectiveness

A good malware removal tool should be able to detect and remove threats on your device with speed and accuracy. We don’t advise this, but it’s possible to test the program by deliberately infecting an unused computer with malware and seeing how good it is at identifying it. You can load many malware samples and measure how quickly each program you’re testing identifies and removes the samples. Look out for important statistics like the number of files it caught and how well the program could recover a device after an infection. Another key metric is the CPU load of the software; does it consume considerable resources and slow down your computer?

Extra Features

Many malware removal programs include extra features to entice users. For example, some include a VPN service (virtual private network) that lets you surf the web privately and anonymously. You may also find a password manager to help you manage your online accounts or a tool that monitors the dark web for leaked credentials and reports back to you if your credentials have been compromised. Either way, it's preferable to choose a program that offers extra features than those that do not. This way, you may not have to pay separately for a VPN, password manager, etc.

Ease of Use

It's important for any cybersecurity program to be easy to use. Most users aren’t technical people, so you must not be tech-savvy to know how to navigate your way around the program. When testing a program, try to cover all its features and see if you found it easy to navigate. If not, the program could give you problems in the future. Bitdefender was the most user-friendly out of the programs we tested, and you’ll likely find it easy to use.

Customer Support

Things can go wrong at any time, and you should be able to contact someone for help if that happens. A lot of cybersecurity programs have customer support teams that you can contact through email, telephone, and live chat. If you have the time, you can test multiple programs to measure their response times to support inquiries.

Note that customer support is usually reserved for paid users which makes sense because support reps cost money to train and employ. If you’re a free user, you’ll likely only have access to FAQs, forums, and online communities for support, which can be also valuable.

How we test

To test for the best malware removal we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service.

We then tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.

We also referenced how well each platform scored for malware detection, and also for false positives.

Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.

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NortonLifeLock has announced it has rebranded as Gen Digital following the completion of its merger with Avast.

The company revealed the acquisition of its fellow antivirus giant in August 2021 in a multi-billion dollar merger worth between $8.1 and $8.6 billion.

The newly formed company, which will have two headquarters, one in Prague, Czech Republic, and the other in Tempe, Arizona, is expected to have more than 500 million customers, uniting well-known brands including Norton, Avast, LifeLock, Avira, AVG, CCleaner and ReputationDefender under one new entity.

Comprehensive portfolio

As of today, Gen Digital will trade on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange, under the “GEN” symbol, although shareholders need not do anything.

The move should deliver more than $280 million in annual cost savings within three years’ time.

Avast was founded in Prague in 1988 before going public in 2018 on the London Stock Exchange, where it was valued at approximately $3 billion, making it one of the UK’s biggest technology listings at the time. 

NortonLifeLock’s Chief Executive Officer, Vincent Pilette, is keeping his position at the newly-merged company, with Avast CEO Ondrej Vlcek joining as president and board member.

"Today, five billion people around the world are online; digital life is life," Pilette said. "We’re all a part of a new generation, regardless of age. It’s not Gen X, Y or Z, it’s Generation Digital. Gen’s family of trusted brands has a heritage of protecting the first digital generations and is united by a shared purpose to power Digital Freedom for the next generation of our digital lives." 

Cybersecurity in the enterprise has become a growing challenge in recent times, even more so since the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. Businesses are increasing their budgets as they try their best to protect against numerous risks, such as credential phishing, data, and identity theft, distributed denial of service attacks, business email compromise, or ransomware attacks. 

While Norton focuses more on identity protection, Avast is more oriented toward antivirus solutions. Now, the two companies hope to provide “a more comprehensive portfolio” to their customers. 

“Our day-to-day life is almost entirely connected; we bank, shop, learn, work and connect online.” said Vlcek. “While the advancement of technology has brought conveniences and connections we couldn’t have imagined, it also brings added complexities and new types of threats. At Gen, we're committed to bringing our passion, expertise and global presence together to innovatively tackle these challenges and ultimately power Digital Freedom for everyone.”

• Check out the best firewalls right now

Avast SecureLine is an easy to use VPN from the popular security vendor Avast Software, but underneath it is powered by the HideMyAss! network (HideMyAss! is a part of the Avast group).

SecureLine's network only has 700 servers (the top providers have thousands), but they’re well distributed across 58 locations and 36 countries. P2P support is available from eight locations. 

There are apps for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android, while desktop users get Chrome and Firefox extensions. 

Avast allows you to use the VPN on up to 10 devices. Sounds good, but keep in mind this is a device, not a simultaneous connection limit. Once you’ve set up the VPN on 10 devices, you won’t be able to install it on others until you deactivate it on one of the 10 existing pieces of hardware. 

• Want to try Avast SecureLine? Check out the website here

Avast has been busy adding many more features since our last review. The apps don’t just support the OpenVPN protocol, for instance: there’s beta support for the ultra-fast WireGuard, and a stealth Mimic protocol to bypass VPN detection and get you connected in even the most VPN-unfriendly locations. And whatever you’re using, a kill switch keeps you protected if the connection drops.

But SecureLine’s best new features are focused on ease of use. There’s none of the manual setup hassles you’ll usually see elsewhere, for instance; once you’ve got the service running on one device, a Pairing scheme configures it for others in seconds. And a Smart VPN mode keeps you safe by automatically enabling the VPN when you most need it, such as when accessing public Wi-Fi, using torrent apps, visiting banking websites or streaming videos.

Plans and pricing

Avast SecureLine is priced from $4.59 a month on the annual plan (there’s no monthly billing unfortunately). You can pay via card or PayPal.

There are two and three-year plans, but with both priced at a very similar $4.39 a month, we’re struggling to see any reason to choose them.

This still looks like fair value, but if you’re on a budget, there’s big money to be saved elsewhere. Private Internet Access asks only $3.33 a month on its annual plan, for instance, and if you sign up for three years, you’ll pay only $2.03 a month for the first term, one of the best value deals around.

Avast SecureLine scores for its generous trial, although it’s presented in a slightly confusing way. The website states there is a ‘7 day free trial, no credit card required’, which sounds good, so we clicked the link. The app did ask for credit card (or PayPal) details after all, but it also gave us a whole 60 days to try the service before we’d be charged. In a world where most VPNs gave up their free trials years ago (if they had them at all), that’s a very good deal.

Privacy and logging

Avast’s use of the highly secure OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols get it off to a good start in the privacy stakes. A kill switch protects you if the VPN drops, there’s DNS leak protection, and a bonus in WebRTC leak protection with the browser extension.

Avast also deserves credit for its VPN privacy policy. Not only does this have plenty of detail on what the service logs, and what it doesn’t, but the policy also explains this far more clearly than most.

The good news is SecureLine doesn’t log your originating IP address, DNS queries or anything else which could identify the websites you visit, the services and applications you use, or whatever else you might be doing online.

The not-so-great news is there's a degree of session logging, including connection timestamps, and the amount of data transmitted. But that's not enough to link you to any web action, and Avast deletes this after 35 days. (For instance, data logged on January 3 is deleted on February 7.)

Avast's various apps use standard analytics libraries (Google Firebase, Google Fabric, AppsFlyer) to collect some basic data of their own: OS version of the device, the actions you're taking in the app (if you enable a feature, disable another, maybe uninstall and reinstall the client). That's also commonplace, though, and if you're uncomfortable, anyway, you're able to turn off this kind of data collection in the app Settings panel.

Overall, Avast isn’t saying anything very surprising or unusual here. Still, potential customers shouldn’t have to take any VPN provider’s words on trust. The likes of TunnelBear, ExpressVPN and NordVPN have put themselves through independent audits to verify their privacy promises, and we’d like to see Avast do the same.

Windows app

Avast SecureLine VPN’s Windows app takes up a little more screen real-estate than most of the competition, but it’s well-designed, and does a great job of talking even total VPN novices through the start-up process.

If you’re a newbie, for instance, you might think just running SecureLine VPN is enough, but the app is quick to point out the real situation. ‘Your online privacy is not protected’, it told us, sternly: ‘Turn on your VPN to encrypt what you do online.’

How do you do that? Just in case the large button currently marked ‘Off’ wasn’t enough of a clue, the app displayed a large arrow pointing to it, with the caption ‘Start here.’

Tap the button, and the app quickly connects to your nearest SecureLine server. While other apps then typically just display a ‘Connected’ message, Avast is far more clear and helpful: ‘Your connection is encrypted and your location is disguised.’

It’s the same with the IP addresses. The app doesn’t just display your original and VPN IP addresses – hovering your mouse over a Help icon displays a pop-up with a brief but clear explanation of what these figures mean. Even VPN newcomers won’t need to look at this more than a couple of times, but it’s still a great idea, and a real usability plus.

The location list is a little more basic. It allows filtering by continent, and to view P2P or streaming-optimized servers, but there’s no Favorites system or Recent list to speed up reconnecting to commonly used servers.

The Settings panel allows you to choose a protocol. WireGuard is now available in beta form, OpenVPN is here, and Avast’s own Mimic protocol is designed to get you connected in VPN-unfriendly environments where other services are blocked.

A panel at the bottom of the app window appeared during the review, displaying alarming information: ‘We’ve detected potential attempts to track you’, it warned.

We clicked the Resolve button expecting some help, but instead got a couple of screens trying to persuade us to buy Avast’s AntiTrack product, and a third giving us a choice of one, two or three-year subscriptions. We expect clickbait ads trying to scare users in free products, but not when we’ve paid for a supposedly professional service.

The app’s core features worked well during testing. Connection times were quick at around a second for WireGuard, 5-6 seconds for OpenVPN, even with the most distant locations; some VPNs take 4 to 5 times as long. There were no failed connections or connection drops, either – SecureLine proved very stable.

(Why? Peeking under the hood, SecureLine uses an optimized Wintun driver rather than the clunky TAP adapters required by many VPNs. Keeping it simple should make for better performance and less chance of connection issues or conflicts with other software.)

We used various tricks to forcibly close the VPN anyway, to find out how the kill switch performed. In every case it correctly blocked our internet, ensuring our data was never exposed, then quickly reconnected.

We noticed one odd WireGuard issue. If the WireGuard process crashed, the app activated the kill switch and appeared to reconnect, but our internet was still dead. We had to close the VPN and reconnect to restore normal operations.

That’s annoying, but not a disaster. The app still blocked our internet as it should, and our traffic wasn’t exposed until we manually closed the VPN, giving us time to close our P2P app or stop whatever else we were doing. That’s not a bad result, especially when WireGuard is in beta, and hopefully the issue will be fixed in the final release.

Perhaps the most ambitious feature of the app is its Smart VPN Mode, where you’re able to set the VPN to automatically connect according to your preferred rules. You could have SecureLine kick in whenever you connect to public Wi-Fi networks, stream videos, use torrent apps, or visit banking sites, for instance.

We tried opening 10 top US and banking sites, five streaming and five torrent apps, and the service worked each time. When we launched our Netflix app, for instance, SecureLine connected to a streaming-optimized location, automatically shutting itself down when the app closed; easy.

But we also noticed a worrying problem: Smart VPN Mode didn’t always recognize whether we were protected. If we visited a banking site when our 10 device slots were used, for instance, SecureLine first displayed an ‘activating’ notification. The connection failed because we didn’t have a free device, but although this was displayed in the app window, it didn’t show a warning notification. Users could easily be left thinking they were safe, when in fact SecureLine VPN wasn’t offering any protection at all.

Mac and mobile apps

Avast SecureLine VPN’s Mac app looks and feels almost identical to its Windows cousin, and that’s just fine with us. The interface is smartly designed and easy to use, and once you’ve learned how the app works on one platform, you’ll know exactly how to use it on the other.

There’s one small exception under the hood. The Mac app supports IPSec and Avast’s Mimic protocol, but it doesn’t have WireGuard. That’ll hold back Mac speeds a little (more on that later), but as Avast is beginning to roll out WireGuard support, we hope it’ll be arriving on Mac soon.

SecureLine’s Android app has a more basic interface than the desktop editions. There are no novice-friendly captions and tooltips explaining how everything works, for instance. The location picker is just a lengthy list of countries and cities, with no option to filter by continent, and no way to choose streaming or P2P-optimized servers at all. It can’t automatically connect when you stream videos, or access banking or P2P sites, either.

This is still a decent Android VPN app. There’s WireGuard support, integration with Android’s system-wide kill switch, and a new feature in split tunneling (the ability to decide which apps use the VPN tunnel, and which don’t). But it doesn’t compete with the best of the Android competition, and it’s no match for SecureLine’s desktop apps.

SecureLine’s iOS offering is simpler still, with no WireGuard (just Mimic and IPSec only) and even fewer features. It connects quickly and connections are stable, but otherwise this looks a little underpowered.

There is one interesting feature which is available right across the app range. It’s called ‘Pair Devices’ and it allows you to connect a new app installation to your account without having to know the username and password. 

This is very easy to use – the Pair Devices option generates a keycode on the new device, you enter it into the new one, and it’s ready to connect. It saves you time and hassle, and allows someone else to set up their own device without you giving them your account and password – very convenient.

Support

Avast is a security giant with more than 400 million active users, and that means – unlike many far smaller VPN providers – it’s learned a lot about how to offer support. 

A simple support page points users to everything they’re likely to need in its top three links, for instance, with a good range of product FAQs, setup and usage guides for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.

Live chat is on hand if you need more help. We had a quick, friendly and informative response to our test question. As is often the case with antivirus companies, we didn’t get the impression that the agent had the expertise we sometimes see with specialist VPN providers. But that’s no surprise when Avast support must cover so many other products and areas, and overall, it’s likely the website and support team should be enough to help you with most common VPN issues and situations.

Performance

Avast SecureLine's Windows client offers only five servers it says are 'optimized for streaming': one in the UK, one in Germany, and three in the US (New York, Miami, and, apparently, Gotham City – which is maybe the very definition of a virtual server). Would that be enough to allow us access to geoblocked content?

The answer turned out to be: not entirely. It failed with Netflix in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Japan. But SecureLine did get us access to Disney Plus and Amazon Prime Video in the US. And it scored in the UK, unblocking BBC iPlayer, ITV and Channel 4 – and also succeeded with Australia’s 9Now. 

Switching to our performance tests, Avast’s OpenVPN managed a mid-range 240-250Mbps, acceptable for most devices and tasks. But WireGuard speeds were exceptional at 820-840Mbps, earning Avast an impressive fifth place in our most recent speed charts (Surfshark, TorGuard and Norton were equal first with 950Mbps+, with Hide.me in fourth).

Most people don’t have the 1Gbps connections used with our main test sites, so how would Avast cope elsewhere? We switched to another UK location, connecting via a Three 5G broadband router normally capable of 250Mbps, and the answer was ‘very well’: Avast SecureLine still reached a respectable 210Mbps.

Finally, we checked the Windows, Mac, Android and iOS apps for DNS leaks. The entire Avast SecureLine VPN range turned out to be entirely leak-free, properly protecting our identity at all times.

Final verdict

It’s user-friendly and offers excellent performance, so Avast SecureLine could be a smart choice for fans of the company. But poor Netflix unblocking and assorted app and privacy issues mean it’s not ready to compete with the top specialist VPNs just yet.

• We've also highlighted the best VPN

Ransomware operators may have given victims a slight respite over the summer, but this now seems to have come to an end as attacks rise once again, new research has suggested.

The Q2/2022 Threat Report from Avast claims the number of global ransomware attacks increased by almost a quarter (24%) in just three months (compared to Q1 2022).

The rise, coming after “months of decline”, was most felt on endpoints in Argentina (56% rise), the UK (55%), Brazil (50%), France (42%), and India (37%). 

Conti disbands, sends shockwaves

Avast Malware Research Director, Jakub Kroustek, says there were two main reasons for the drop that occurred in Q4 2021 and Q1 2022: one being law enforcement agencies “busting” ransomware group members, and the other one being the war in Ukraine. 

Although ransomware operators didn't exactly replace keyboards with AK-47’s, their focus changed to help one, or the other, political agenda. 

Conti, a major ransomware operator, was hit the hardest, Kroustek reminds, saying the group’s members and affiliates disagreed over Conti’s stance, resulting in a slowdown, and even a complete stop, of operations. 

“Things dramatically changed in Q2/2022. Conti members have now branched off to create new ransomware groups, like Black Basta and Karakurt, or may join other existing groups, like Hive, BlackCat, or Quantum, causing an uptick in activity,” he concluded.

When the invasion of Ukraine first kicked off, Conti publicly stated its support for the Russian regime and threatened to retaliate against anyone who’d try to strike at the Russian government in cyberspace. This did not sit well with Conti’s affiliates, many of whom were Ukrainian. Soon enough, one hacker started leaking Conti’s source code, as well as private communications. In late May, Conti officially shut down, and its members joined numerous other ransomware groups. 

• Here's our take for the best firewalls right now

The best firewall software is a digital barrier between your device and the internet. All of the traffic that flows from one to the other is analyzed to spot malicious files that could be malware.

Our team of experts test firewalls across four essential criteria. Detection and blocking, or how accurate the firewall is in spotting and stopping malicious files from being downloaded. The speed it takes to quarantine malicious files, and the impact on performance during this process. And finally, how easy the firewall is to use on a range of different platforms.

Bitdefender is our number one pick for the best firewall software, consistently earning exemplary scores in our testing. Norton and Avast also offer excellent firewalls.

Firewalls work best when paired with the best antivirus software, so check out our top picks there.

The Best Firewall Software of 2026:

Best firewall software overall

Bitdefender Total Security is a powerful internet security suite that offers a firewall among a range of featured security protections. There's also anti-virus protection, but its multi-layered malware protection also protects against ransomware.

Other features include anti-phishing, anti-fraud, and anti-theft options, as well as a performance optimizer. A wide range of privacy protection options include anti-tracking, file shredder, parental controls, as well as protection for microphones and webcams to prevent them from being used by third party apps without your consent. It also offers a built-in VPN with a reasonable limit of 200MB/day/device.

Bitdefender Total Security isn't just for protecting Windows users either, but can also be used to protect against attacks on Android, macOS, and iOS as well. Even better, a single product license allows you to use the software on up to 5 different devices, so you can use Bitdefender Total Security for your home PCs as well as smartphones.

Overall, Bitdefender Total Security pretty much does what its name suggests, offering a very wide range of security protections that go beyond just a firewall. It costs $59.99 when paid for a year or $129.99 when paid for two.

Protect your devices with our Bitdefender coupons. Get top-notch cybersecurity at a discounted price and keep your online activities safe.

Read our full Bitdefender Total Security review.

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Best multi-feature firewall software

Norton 360 Deluxe offers an even richer and more feature-packed internet security suite than just a firewall. While it provides antivirus and standard anti-malware protections it dares to go further.

Additional features in the Norton 360 Deluxe include a secure VPN, parental controls, a password manager (although you may want to use the best password manager instead), and online cloud backup. There's also a feature for dark web monitoring so you can be alerted if any of your details appear for sale on the dark web, and AI Scam Protection to keep you and your bank account safe from scammers.

Norton 360 Deluxe costs $49.99 for the first year, but then renews at $119.99/year, making it more expensive than some of the other solutions listed here, like Bitdefender Total Security. But just like Bitdefender Total Security, Norton 360 Deluxe runs on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, and a single license covers up to 5 devices in all.

If you want to add identity theft protection you can upgrade to Norton 360 with Lifelock, which provides additional identity protection and credit monitoring as well as an insurance provision in the event that your personal information is misused.

Read our full Norton 360 Deluxe review.

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Best multi-platform firewall software

Avast Premium Security is another paid-for full-featured internet security suite that you can either buy for a single device, be it Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android, or as a package that covers up to 10 devices, regardless of the platform.

As with Bitdefender, and Norton, this means that you can protect both a home PC as well as mobile devices. However, because there's an option to protect up to 10 devices it means you can use a single license to protect the family as well.

As well as a firewall for all devices, Avast Premium Security also provides anti-ransomware protection, and file shredder options. There are also anti-phishing and anti-fraud protections for safer online banking, and there's also protection against the unauthorized use of your webcam.

Overall, Avast Premium Security is another solid and reliable internet security suite, but one thing that does let it down is the constant pop-up ads pushing cross-sell for PC tune-up and other software, something people who have paid for a license should not have to constantly deal with.

Also, unlike some of its peers, Avast Premium Security doesn’t include a VPN, though it confusingly shows up in the dashboard, but requires a separate subscription.

For one device, Avast Premium Security costs $49.08/year for the first year, and renews at $77.99/year. For 10 devices, it costs $69.48/year for the first year, and $99.99/year for subsequent years.

Read our full Avast Premium Security review.

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Best value firewall software

Firewall, real-time malware detection, USB scanning, Wi-Fi protection, phishing protection: Panda Dome Essential has all the essentials – not to mention, the valuable extras – you'd expect from the best antivirus software.

And, that's just the beginning. Panda Dome is brimming with added extras that some of the other plans on this list can’t match including a dark web scanner, and an integrated VPN. However, it also lacks some features you’ll get with the other products in this guide. For instance, there are no parental controls, nor protection against ransomware that you get with the others.

Like its peers, Panda Dome Essential protects not just Windows PCs, but also macOS, as well as Android and iOS smartphones and tablets.

Another undoubted advantage here is the price - Panda Dome Essential is one of the best value programs out there. And, you even have the option of paying a little more and upgrading to cover an unlimited number of laptops, phones, tablets, and desktops with a single subscription.

For a single device, Panda Dome Essential costs $34.99/year, or $69.99 for two years. You can cover up to 3 devices for $41.99/year, 5 devices for $48.99, 10 devices for $69.99, or any number of devices for $83.99.

Read our full Panda Dome Essential review.

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Best lightweight firewall software

Just about every antivirus tool claims to be ‘lightweight’, but Webroot Essentials is really the only one to deliver on this front. It has a minimal impact on system resources, which makes it a good option for older or less powerful computers.

Webroot provides protection against a wide range of threats, including viruses, malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks. It also includes features like a firewall, and a password manager. But just like Panda Dome Essential, Webroot Essential also lacks a VPN, and parental controls.

It's not easy to compare Webroot's accuracy with the competition, as the big testing labs rarely evaluate the company's products. However, when they are reviewed, they generally score high, and our own tests show solid and reliable protection.

Another positive is that the product supports Windows, and macOS computers, as well as Android, and iOS smartphones and tablets. You can buy Webroot Essentials to protect either a single device, 3 devices, or 5 devices.

To protect 1 device you’ll have to pay $37.49 for 1 year, $43.74 for 2 years, or $45.83 for 3 years. Similarly, for 3 devices, it’ll cost $52.49 for 1 year, $61.24 for 2 years, and $64.16 for 3 years. The 5 device protection plan costs $67.49 for 1 year, $78.74 for 2 years, and $82.49 for 3 years.

There's a lot to love about Webroot Essentials, and the 70-day 100% money-back guarantee suggests the company is confident in the product as well. If you're sick of overly complex and bloated engines, Webroot is a worthy contender for you.

Find the best deals on Webroot products with our Webroot promo codes.

Best Free Firewall of 2026

Best free firewall software overall

ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus, also known as ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall, aims to provide more than basic malware protection. Positioned as a lightweight security suite for Windows users, it combines classic antivirus tools with firewall functionality and a handful of extra features.

At its core, ZoneAlarm offers antivirus and antispyware protection designed to detect a wide range of threats including viruses, bots, worms, and trojans. It offers two types of scans, namely Critical Scan, which is faster and only scans critical areas of the file system and OS, and the Full Scan, which combs through the entire file system on the local disk as well as on any attached USB devices.

It also features a two-way firewall that monitors traffic coming into and going out of your network, makes your PC invisible to hackers, and stops spyware from broadcasting your personal data.

ZoneAlarm comes in both Free and Pro versions. The former lacks several features, including expert rules, anti-phishing protection, web monitor, threat emulation, and more. What it will do is identify and block potentially unsafe traffic, hide open ports, and allow you to block any app from connecting to the internet.

Read our full ZoneAlarm review.

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Best lightweight free firewall software

TinyWall is actually designed to be used with Windows’ built-in Defender firewall, so its performance impact is minimal.

TinyWall will actively block trojans, viruses, worms, and other forms of malware, and prevent the modification of Windows firewall’s settings by malicious programs. And it will do all of this without you needing to know about ports, protocols, or application details.

But probably its most appealing feature is its no-popup approach. Most firewalls will display a popup asking you what you want to do whenever an application is trying to access the internet. Not only is this annoying, but eventually you’ll just start granting access to everything to get rid of the popups, which isn’t very secure.

TinyWall gets around this problem by expecting you to whitelist programs that you actually want to be able to access the Internet. When you find a program has been blocked, it’s easy to add it to the whitelist, and then you can continue with what you were doing.

Read our full TinyWall review.

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Best basic free firewall software

If you have a PC running a version of Windows more recent than XP, then you already have a free firewall installed, and unless you’ve changed any settings, it’s already active and running.

Known as Windows Defender since the release of Windows 10, the firewall is part of a suite of security tools included by default with Windows installations. Microsoft recommends that you leave the Defender on, even if you’re also using another firewall.

To manage its settings, simply search for 'security' in Windows and select the Security app. When it opens, set the Windows Defender Firewall toggle to on. Turning it off again simply involves clicking the same button.

You can also configure the firewall to allow a certain app through the firewall. From the same place as where you turn it on/off, you can select ‘Allow an app through firewall’ and then choose the app in question.

Read our full Windows Defender review.

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Best designed free firewall software

GlassWire is a network monitoring and firewall tool known for its polished interface and user-friendly design. Its free edition is a good option for anyone who wants more visibility into their internet activity without navigating complex firewall configurations.

One of the key features in the free version is its ability to visually track real-time and historical network activity. You can see which apps are using bandwidth, what servers they're connecting to, and how much data is being transferred. This info can help you identify bandwidth-heavy apps or even detect unexpected network behavior.

In terms of firewall functionality, the free version includes a basic click-to-block feature that allows you to block up to two apps from accessing the internet. However, many of the more advanced features are only available in the $2.99/month Premium edition. For instance, the free version does not include the ability to detect new or unfamiliar devices on your local network, nor will it let you create multiple firewall profiles for different networks.

This is why it’s best to use GlassWire Free in tandem with Windows Firewall, using it more as a network traffic monitor rather than a firewall.

Take a look at our full GlassWire review.

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We've also listed the best endpoint protection software.

Best firewall FAQs

How we test the best firewalls

To test for the best firewall we first set up an account with the relevant platform, then we tested the service to see how simple and easy it was to set up, configure, and use. The aim was to see how useful the basic tools of each firewall were, and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools. Additionally, we needed to make sure that each of the firewalls worked as intended.

Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.

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The best ransomware protection helps protect against the threat of hackers breaching your networks or device, and then encrypting your data before forcing you to pay for a decryption key or face losing your files forever.

There are many motivations behind ransomware attacks - the most prominent reason being money. Threat actors will also perform ransomware attacks to steal secrets, disrupt businesses, or just because they can.

Our experts have written about all of the biggest ransowmare attacks, and have spent years testing the best ransomware protection services. They what the difference is between a good service and a bad service, whether its device and platform compatibility, encryption protections, backup options, or ease of use and value for money.

Bitdefender holds the top spot for best ransomware protection thanks to its comprehensive coverage against common and niche attack vectors and high detection rates. AVG ranks at number two on our list for its easy configuration, and Avast takes third place for its lightweight protection that doesn't hamper performance.

We've also listed the best encryption software.

The best ransomware protection of 2026 in full:

Best ransomware protection overall

Get a 50-60% discount on Bitdefender Antivirus Plus
TechRadar's #1 rated antivirus in a world packed with loads of virus protection providers, and doesn't even cost that much more than free antivirus downloads.

One at any rankings of big independent antivirus, and you’ll see that Bitdefender's premium security products always rise to the top.

Bidefender Antivirus Plus is reliable and accurate in its virus detecting, boasting web and URL filtering to block access to malicious sites, as well as a secure browser that keeps your online banking and shopping transactions safe. Plus, there's a password manager which auto-completes credit card details in web forms - although if you require more advanced features, you'll probably want the best password manager. It also scores high for its excellent anti-phishing module, which alerts you to malicious links in your search engine results and blocks access to dangerous sites.

That’s not all: of course, there's also the multi-layer ransomware protection that heuristically learns the behavior of such threats to keep you safe as well as the ability to scan all your linked devices via the Bitdefender Central mobile app.

There are one or two issues – it grabs more resources than average, and might conflict with some programs – but Bitdefender Antivirus Plus is still a likeable package which offers excellent detection rates, great performance, and more than enough bonus features to justify the price.

Bitdefender Internet Security builds on AVP and triples the number of devices covered plus offers anti-spam, firewall, parental advisor and file encryption features.

For a little bit more you can purchase the Bitdefender Total Security edition. It adds all of the above and covers up to five PCs, Macs, Android and iOS devices.

Protect your devices with our Bitdefender promo codes. Get top-notch cybersecurity at a discounted price and keep your online activities safe.

Read our full Bitdefender Antivirus Plus review.

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Best ransomware protection for remote scanning

If you're looking for ransomware protection that keeps quiet and won't disturb your work, be warned – AVG Antivirus Free is quite vocal with its notifications, and irks us from time to time with pop-ups telling us we've done something fantastic with regard to our online security.

As a ransomware shield and anti-malware app, though, it's very good. The dashboard is user-friendly, there's protection not just from downloadable threats, but from dodgy links too, and you can use your mobile to scan your PC remotely, which is pretty clever.

Although the free version offers basic antivirus protection, you really need to upgrade to the paid version to get the full-featured protection against ransomware, as well as additional security software protections such as data encryption options as well as a firewall.

Read our full AVG Antivirus Free review.

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Best ransomware protection for multiple device protection

Avast Antivirus is one of the most competent internet protection suites out there. While the company is famous for providing free antivirus software, it's worth noting that this now comes bundled with an anti-malware feature that uses behavioral monitoring to spot rogue programs.

What's even better is that not only are Avast's basic products free, but they are also available for mobile devices as well as for desktops, which makes Avast a particular ideal choice if you have multiple devices you need to check.

Even better is that ransomware protection is included in the free version of the Avast Antivirus platform, so you don't even need to pay to upgrade for this, though additional security features are available if you do.

For business users, there are paid-for internet security options to cover a range of needs and options.

Read our full Avast Antivirus review.

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Best ransomware protection for a lightweight solution

Just about every antivirus tool claims to be ‘lightweight’, but Webroot Antivirus is really the only one to deliver on this front. Installation takes seconds, the program files barely use 2MB of your hard drive, RAM footprint is tiny, and there are no bulky signature updates to tie up your bandwidth.

Considering this, there's no compromise on features, which makes it all the more impressive. Along with the core protection, there's smart behavior monitoring, accurate real-time anti-phishing, a firewall and network connection monitor, enhanced anti-ransomware, and other interesting bonuses.

It's not easy to compare Webroot's accuracy with the competition, as the big testing labs rarely evaluate the company's products. However, when they are reviewed, they generally score high, and our own tests show solid and reliable protection.

Features include always-on security, identity protection, real-time anti-phishing, firewall monitor.

Read our full Webroot Antivirus review.

Find the best deals on Webroot products with our Webroot promo codes.

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Best ransomware protection for experts

If you judge antivirus software on the length of its feature list, ESET NOD32 Antivirus might be a bit of a disappointment. There’s no firewall, password manager, file shredder, vulnerability scanner or any of the bundled bonuses you'll often find in its rivals.

This doesn't mean the package is short on power, however. It's just more focused on the fundamentals. ESET NOD32 Antivirus comes with real-time malware protection, some of the best heuristic detection around, an anti-ransomware layer, exploit protection, URL filtering to block malicious websites, and modules to prevent attacks using PowerShell and malicious scripts.

A Device Control module limits the risk of infection from other devices by controlling access to USB sticks, external hard drives, optical storage media, even devices connecting by Bluetooth and FireWire. It's an unusual addition, but could make a difference if others are regularly plugging devices into your PC.

Just bear in mind that ESET NOD32 Antivirus isn't aimed at beginners. The interface is clumsy sometimes, some features are very advanced, and even the Help isn't always helpful.

Experienced users will appreciate ESET’s power and configurability, however. Above-average protection does a good job of keeping you safe, and a lightweight design ensures the package won't slow you down.

ESET Internet Security builds on NOD 32 and triples the number of devices covered plus offers firewall, botnet protection, webcam protection, antispam and more. Alternatively, you can purchase the ESET Smart Security Premium edition for not much more. It adds all of the above as well as password management and secure data.

Read our full ESET NOD32 Antivirus review.

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Best ransomware removal software

Best ransomware removal software overall

If you have a ransomware infection, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware should be your first port of call. It’s updated daily, so you can trust it to identify and remove new threats the minute they appear.

The first time you install Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, you’re given a 14-day trial of the premium edition, which includes preventative tools like real-time scanning and specific protection from ransomware. After two weeks, it reverts to the basic free version. This has to be activated manually, but is still a top-notch security tool. We recommend running it at least once a week to check or any nasties that you haven't noticed, or if you notice that your web browser has suddenly started acting strangely (likely a result of adware).

Recently, Malwarebytes bought Adwcleaner, which – as its name suggests – targets and removes annoying programs that hijack your browser by changing your homepage, resetting your default search engine, or adding unwanted toolbars. It’s also available free, and along with Anti-Malware, is a great addition to your security toolkit.

Read our full Malwarebytes Anti-Malware review.

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Best free ransomware removal software

Not all ransomware encrypts data in the same way, so security software providers have to create specific solutions as new threats emerge. At the time of writing, the security experts at Avast have developed Free Ransomware Decryption Tools to tackle 21 different strains of file-locking ransomware.

To help you work out which one you need, Avast has provided a detailed description of how each form of ransomware works, what extension you’ll see on the encrypted files, and an example of the type of message the virus creators have prepared for their victims.

Once you’ve downloaded the appropriate tool, it will guide you through the process of wiping out the ransomware without paying the criminals. You’ll need to provide two versions of the same file – an encrypted one, and the original.

This will be easiest if you made a backup before the infection, but Avast also suggests locations where you might be able to find unaffected original files. The tool will then compare the two and use the results to determine the password.

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We've listed the best endpoint protection software.

Best ransomware protection FAQs

How we test

To test for the best ransomware protection we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, then we tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations. The aim was to push each ransomware protection platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.

Read more on how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar.

We've also rated the best identity management software.

Get in touch

• Want to find out about commercial or marketing opportunities? Click here
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With the amount of people affected by cyber crime rising every year, the need for better online security across your devices has never been more important. And while antivirus software might not be the most exciting thing to spend your money on, Avast One has a special offer on its security suite that'll make it an easier brunt to bear.

Avast One's all-in-one package offers comprehensive security, bringing all your devices under one subscription - or even your entire family's. With its 'Individual' package covering five devices, the 'Family' plan encompasses up to 30, able to equip them with a VPN, antivirus, firewall, password leak alerts, and much more.

• US: Get Avast One for a year for $99.99 $50.28 (50% off)
• UK: Get Avast One for a year for $39.99
• Australia: Get Avast One for a year for $139.99 $70.68 (50% off)

Avast One is compatible with Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android devices with the aforementioned options of subscribing to either an Individual or Family plan.

There's also the added reassurance of its 30-day money back guarantee, giving you a month to try out the service and get all your money back if it's not for you.

Avast One special antivirus deals

How good is Avast One?

In our review, we awarded the Avast One security suite a strong 4 out of 5 stars, commending it for its selection of powerful tools and all-round protection for your devices while online, giving paying customers additional features for a more boosted protective bubble. 

The package has seen a real overhaul from Avast's previous offerings, starting with its "light and airy" interface and "friendly graphics and speedy access to all of One's core features". With everything at your fingertips, its ease-of-use is backed up by its plethora of features, including in-depth scans for every need, and smart tools that detect new files and trigger scans on start-up.

Its speeds across launching and carrying out such tasks were comfortably middling - neither the fastest nor the slowest. But it's really upped its game in detecting and blocking malicious sites: "The AV-Comparatives 2021 Anti-Phishing test found it blocked an excellent 96% of test URLs, putting it equal first with Trend Micro, and ahead of Fortinet (95%), Kaspersky (94%), ESET (91%) and Bitdefender (87%)."

While we did deem its free 'Essential' plan more than enough for a lot of users, we dub Avast One one of the leaders in antivirus, concluding in our verdict: "While there are competitors who can beat Avast One in individual areas, what Avast One really succeeds in doing is bundling a strong set of individual tools into a single suite where everything can work well together."

Avast One features: what you get with this deal

The list of Avast One features is impressive in its length and quality. Sign up, and you'll get access to:

Device:

• Antivirus, ransomware protection and malware prevention
• Advanced firewall
• Sensitive Data Shield to ensure your private documents aren't compromised
• Behavior Shield to monitor suspicious behavior in real time
• Wi-Fi vulnerability alerts
• Web Hijack Guard for safer internet banking and shopping

Privacy:

• VPN for streaming and security with servers in 55 locations across 34 countries and secure kill switch
• Connection and Network advisors
• Advertiser tracking prevention and digital fingerprint masking
• Data breach checking
• Privacy Advisor
• Password protection and data breach monitoring
• Webcam protection

Smooth performance:

• App checker to keep all apps and drivers up-to-date
• Clean-up tools
• Speed optimization tool

As cybercrime tactics evolve, and the damage their actions bring grows more expensive, the need for state-of-the-art antivirus software grows. Now, one of the world’s leading antivirus brands, Avast, has prepared a special offer to ensure the security of your endpoints without burning a hole in your wallet. 

Avast Business is a comprehensive cybersecurity solution, designed for firms of all shapes and sizes, from employees working remotely, across small, family businesses, to large enterprises.

Users can expect an award-winning business antivirus solution, impenetrable defenses against viruses, phishing, ransomware, spyware, zero-seconds, as well as Wi-Fi vulnerabilities. Avast’s solutions are powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, for best-in-class cybersecurity protection. 

A single subscription gets you an online management platform, device protection covering Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices, data protection, IT protection, and a whole slew of other features. 

Don’t miss out on the special offer:

• Essential Business Security - $29.59/year/device 
• Premium Business Security - $37.59/year/device 
• Ultimate Business Security - $45.59/year/device

There’s nothing to lose, as Avast Business offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Avast Business features: What you get with this deal

Device:

• Antivirus, ransomware, spyware, and malware  protection 
• USB protection
• Business data protection keeps personal, business, and customer data safe

Privacy:

• Built-in VPN to encrypt the data and secure the internet connection  
• Password protection keeps credentials stored in the browser secure 
• Webcam protection prevents unauthorized apps from accessing your computer’s webcam 

Performance:

• Online management platform to easily set up protection, manage subscriptions and monitor the devices 
• 24/5 IT support - fast, friendly, and skilled 
• Patch management automatically fixes software vulnerabilities 

Staying up to date with the ever-evolving security landscape is central to maintaining the security of webservers and keeping potential threats at bay. 

There are several key threats to webservers that are important to be aware of, to prevent and mitigate those risks. DoS and DDoS attacks, SQL injections, unpatched software and cross-site scripting, to name a few. 

Now, a recent discovery from threat researchers at Avast has shone a light on an immediate and significant risk to web developers worldwide, named Parrot TDS.

What is a TDS?

Traffic Direction Systems (TDS) are not new. They have been an enemy of web-developers for several years. Used as landing pages that direct unsuspecting users to malicious content, TDS serve as a gateway for delivering various malicious campaigns via infected sites.

Many TDS’ have reached a high level of sophistication and often allow attackers to set parameters which look at users’ geolocation, browser type, cookies, and which website they came from. 

This is used to target victims who meet certain conditions and then only display phishing pages to them. These parameters are usually set so that each user is only shown a phishing page once to prevent servers from overloading.

Parrot TDS

In February, Avast’s threat researchers discovered a swarm of attacks using a new Traffic Direction System (TDS) to take control of the victim’s devices. The new TDS, named Parrot TDS, emerged in recent months and has already reached hundreds of thousands of users worldwide, infecting various webservers hosting over 16,500 websites.

One of the main factors distinguishing Parrot TDS from other TDS is how widespread it is and how many potential victims it has. From March 1, 2022, to March 29, 2022, Avast protected more than 600,000 unique users from around the globe visiting sites infected with Parrot TDS, including over 11,000 users in the U.K. In this timeframe, Avast protected the most users in Brazil (73,000) and India (55,000); and more than 31,000 unique users from the US.

In this particular case, the infected sites’ appearances are altered by a campaign called FakeUpdate, which uses JavaScript to display fake notices for users to update their browsers, offering an update file for download. The file we have observed being delivered to victims is a remote access tool called NetSupport Manager which is misused by attackers to give them full access to victims’ computers.

Parrot TDS also creates a backdoor on the infected webservers in the form of a PHP script to act as a backup option for the attacker.

FakeUpdate

Like Parrot TDS, FakeUpdate also performs a preliminary scan to collect information about the site visitor before displaying the phishing message. The scan checks which antivirus product is on the device to determine whether or not to display the phishing message. 

The distributed tool is configured in such a way that the user has very little chance of noticing it and if the file displayed by FakeUpdate is run by the victim, the attackers gain full access to their computer. 

The researchers observed other phishing sites being hosted on the Parrot TDS infected sites, but cannot conclusively tie them to Parrot TDS. 

CMS sites

We believe attackers are exploiting webservers of poorly secured content management systems, like WordPress and Joomla sites, by logging into accounts with weak credentials to gain admin access to the servers.  

WordPress has a long history of being a very rich and desirable target for exploits. This is because the software is based on running a series of PHP scripts, which is a popular venue for hackers. The sheer number of components, including plug-ins, themes, and other scripts, makes it hard to prevent potential infections or compromises.

On top of this, many WordPress websites are running older versions that could be behind several major releases, which leads to security vulnerabilities being left unpatched. In addition, some administrators are inexperienced in IT operational security or simply overburdened with other responsibilities and can’t dedicate enough time to implementing the necessary security measures to ensure the safety of a WordPress site.

How developers can protect their servers

Nevertheless, there are steps web developers can take to protect their servers against these attacks, starting with simply scanning all files on the webserver with an antivirus program. Further steps developers can take are:

- Replace all JavaScript and PHP files on the webserver with original files
- Use the latest CMS version
- Use the latest versions of installed plugins
- Check for automatically running tasks on the webserver (for example, cron jobs)
- Check and set up secure credentials, and use unique credentials for every service
- Check administrator accounts on the server, making sure each of them belongs to developers and have strong passwords
- When applicable, set up 2FA for all the webserver admin accounts
- Use available security plugins (WordPress, Joomla)

How site visitors can avoid falling victim to phishing

For site visitors, it’s as crucial as ever to be vigilant online. If a site being visited appears different than expected, visitors should leave the site and not download any files or enter any information. 

Similarly, visitors should only download updates directly from browser settings and never via other channels.

• Defend from ransomware with the best ransomware protection services around

One of the biggest and best VPN names in the business, HideMyAss! (HMA) has been protecting its users' privacy for more than 15 years.

The company offers a vast network of 1,030+ servers in 290+ locations across 210+ countries. That's fewer servers than some of the top providers, but many more locations and countries (NordVPN has 5,200+ servers across 60 countries, ExpressVPN has 3,000+ servers across 160 locations and 94 countries).

• Want to try HideMyAss? Check out the website here

There's P2P support, but only with a handful of locations, in fact just eight via our Windows app: five in Europe, three in the US.

The service now only supports the OpenVPN protocol (IKEv2 has been dropped from the Windows app, and there's still no sign of WireGuard). It's seriously secure, though, with AES-256-GCM data encryption, RSA-4096 for handshaking and SHA-256 data authentication, while dual kill switches aim to keep you safe if the VPN drops.

The HideMyAss! website proudly proclaims that it works on all your devices, and it just might have a point. Not only are there custom apps for Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and Linux, but there's installation advice to help you manually set up the service on Apple TV, Android TV, Xbox, PlayStation and more.

HideMyAss! supports up to five simultaneous connections with its baseline plans. Paying extra allows you to cover up to 10 devices, or you can set up the service on some routers and connect as many devices as you need: it's your call.

HideMyAss pricing

The HideMyAss! main pricing page looks short on options with just a couple of plans.

You can get support for up to five simultaneous connections for $4.99 a month on the standard annual plan, dropping to only $2.99 over three years.

If you've got lots of hardware to protect, you might want to choose the 10-connection option, but that bumps up the price: $7.99 a month on the annual plan, $6.99 for two years of coverage, or $5.99 for three.

The seeming lack of a monthly plan puzzled us – but in fact there is one, but HMA hides it away on an 'extended' pricing page, presumably because it wants users to buy one of the longer-term plans.

Track down the right page and you'll find an $11.99 monthly billing option. There's also a six-month plan at $8.99, and a two-year plan at $4.99 a month. (The same price as the one-year plan? Maybe that's why it's hidden away on another page.) These appear to support up to five connections only, with no 10-device choice.

$4.99 a month is a fair annual price which beats vendors like Hotspot Shield ($7.99) and ExpressVPN ($8.32). Shopping around can still save you a little cash, though. Private Internet Access charges $3.33 a month for its annual plan, and just $2.03 for the first term of its three-year plan. Ivacy's five-year plan is a tiny $1.19 a month.

If you've got a lot of devices to protect, though, HMA doesn't look like such a good deal. Those low Private Internet Access prices cover up to 10 simultaneous connections, and Windscribe's annual plan, just $4.08 a month, has no device limits at all.

HideMyAss! doesn't support Bitcoin, whatever plan you choose, but you can pay via cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Alipay and various other methods. (Payment options vary by region, but the website has a helpful guide here.)

A 7-day free trial gives you a decent amount of time to try out the service. Be careful, though – you must hand over payment details, and you're automatically billed for the annual plan when the trial ends, unless you cancel (fortunately, that's easy to do online).

If you buy, and then run into problems, you're protected by a 30-day money-back guarantee. This includes plenty of jargon-packed small print, but there's also an unusually generous extra.

Most VPNs say that they won't issue a refund if you've ever claimed a refund from them before. That makes sense – they don't want freeloaders claiming over and over again – but it could also be a little unfair, if, say, you're just trying the service again years later to see if it might work for you.

HideMyAss! understands this, and doesn't care how many previous refund requests you've made, just as long as it's at least six months since the last one. Seems much more reasonable to us.

Privacy and logging

HideMyAss! has so much small print that the Legal section includes a sidebar with no less than 13 separate sections, and many of those are also very lengthy (the privacy policy alone has more than 5,000 words).

This isn't quite as bad as it first sounds. The main reason for the cluster of documents is that HideMyAss! has organized important sections into separate areas, making them easier to find, and most of these are clearly structured and well-written. (If you're allergic to small print and just want the basics, though, check out HMA's no log blog post for a quick explanation.)

The privacy policy explains that there's no logging of originating IP addresses (a possible way to identify you), precise timestamps (when you connected or performed some action), DNS queries, browsing history or transferred data.

There is some general logging of service use, including the date of connection and whether it's AM or PM, and a very approximate idea of transferred data (the service only records whole 100MB blocks, so a 379MB data transfer is logged as 300MB).

HMA justifies this minimal data collecting on the grounds that it helps with troubleshooting, customer service and understanding network capacity, and that makes sense to us.

If you're the skeptical type, though, there's no need to take these words on trust. In August 2020 HMA announced in a blog post that its no logging policy had been audited by security consultancy VerSprite. HMA passed, the company explained, with VerSprite awarding the minimum possible 'low risk' user privacy impact rating.

The HMA site only gives broad details about the scope of the audit, for example talking about it including 'analyses of data, traffic, and storage on both the client and server-side, and the disconnection of user identities with data containing information about online user activity.'

As the report isn't publicly available, there's no way to judge how meaningful the results might be. Still, it's a start, and we have to applaud any VPN which puts itself through this kind of expert independent scrutiny. Hopefully HMA will run further audits in future, this time with results we can read in full.

Windows app

Signing up for HideMyAss! was easy, and within seconds the website was pointing us to the correct app for our Windows PC. There's a little extra help available – links to Mac, Android and iOS apps, some Linux setup advice – but it doesn't have the depth or detail you'll get with ExpressVPN and other high-end providers.

The Windows interface includes an animated icon of HMA's cartoon donkey mascot, but look past that and it's much like any other VPN app. It has a list of locations, a big On/Off button, and a Settings dialog with some useful tweaks.

The Location Picker doesn't force you to scroll – and scroll, and scroll – to find what you need. You're able to filter locations by continent or type (streaming or P2P optimized), enter text in a search box, or save commonly-used locations as Favorites for speedy access later.

The location names don't have any latency or server load indicators, but there is a Speed Test option which detects your nearest servers and calculates their latencies and download speeds.

Kill switch

HMA's app sidebar contains a small number of configuration options, including a setting to automatically connect to the VPN whenever you access the internet, and to enable the client's two kill switches. Yes, two: if the VPN drops, a system-wide kill switch protects you by blocking internet access, and an optional app kill switch closes down your chosen processes (your browser or torrent client, say).

We tested the kill switch by forcibly closing the Openvpn.exe process and its TCP connection, and monitoring IP leaks when we switched servers. In all cases the client correctly blocked all leaks, preventing our real IP from reaching the outside world.

The app kill switch is unusual, because as well as terminating specific apps if the VPN drops, it also automatically connects to HideMyAss! when you launch those apps. Presumably HMA is thinking, if this app is so important that it must be closed if the VPN drops, then that means it must be protected at all times.

This is a nice idea, and it worked during testing, but it doesn't offer enough control. You might not want to connect to the VPN every time you open your torrent client, for instance, but HideMyAss! doesn't care: once it's on the app kill switch list, that's what will happen.

Even worse, when you close the app, the VPN automatically disconnects. You might also be using the VPN to unblock a streaming site, browse securely or whatever, and want to leave it active, but as before, HideMyAss! doesn't care: these are the rules.

• Get a big discount on HideMyAss! with our exclusive offer here

IP Shuffle

HMA's IP Shuffle feature enables changing your IP address automatically or on demand. It's a straightforward way to reduce the chance of others tracking what you're doing, and might also help you get into a site if you're blocked while using the first IP address HMA allocated to you.

Making this happen is as easy as clicking the Refresh button when you're connected. Alternatively, the app can automatically change your IP at a defined interval (30 minutes, an hour, a day, whatever you like).

There's one potential catch. IP Shuffle works by closing your connection, then immediately reconnecting. This should only take a few seconds, but if the kill switch isn't turned on, your identity and traffic will be exposed for that time.

The app's IP Shuffle interface is careful to point out the problem, though, so most users are unlikely to be caught out. And when the app was properly set, we found IP Shuffle worked perfectly, regularly updating our IP without ever exposing our real identity.

Mac and mobile apps

HMA's other apps have a near identical interface to the Windows version, and once you've found your way around one, you'll have no problem using any of them.

The Mac app opens with the same animated donkey, On/Off button, and status information, for instance, and the location list is exactly the same. If you're not interested in the technicalities then you don't have to do anything beyond tap 'On' when you need the VPN, 'Off' when you don't.

There are some Settings differences. The Mac app doesn't have the App Kill Switch, and it can only use OpenVPN UDP (there's no OpenVPN TCP option). But you still get the system-wide kill switch, and the 'connect automatically when accessing untrusted networks' option.

The Android and iOS apps rearrange their interface to fit smaller screens, and try to avoid excess scrolling. The location picker opens with a list of recently chosen locations, and HMA's suggested streaming servers, for instance, and your Favorites are just a tap away.

We noticed one odd difference, as the iOS app had seven fewer locations (290 vs 297).

The Android app is a close match to Windows for settings. Okay, there's no kill switch (though you can set up Android's built-in version), but you still get IP Shuffle, and auto-connect when you access untrusted networks, and the app adds split tunneling and a Wi-Fi Threat Shield to warn you of network dangers.

HMA's iOS app has almost no settings, unfortunately, beyond the option to automatically connect whenever you access untrusted networks (everything but your home and work Wi-Fi, say).

All the apps are easy to use, and got us quickly connected during testing. The iOS version is particularly underpowered, though, and we'd like more functionality across the range. The lack of WireGuard (or almost any other protocol option) is a particular problem. The company doesn't seem very active, though – as we write, the latest blog post in the Product News section is dated January 2021 – so it doesn't look like we'll see big improvements any time soon.

Performance

We measured HideMyAss! speeds from US and UK locations, both with 1Gbps connections, using several performance testing sites and services (SpeedTest's website and command line app, TestMy.net, Netflix's Fast.com and more). We checked the download speeds at least five times from each site, and then we repeated all the tests in an evening session.

OpenVPN results were lower mid-range at 220-225Mbps in the UK, but jumped to 380-400Mbps in the US. That beats some providers – Windscribe only managed 170-270Mbps with OpenVPN, NordVPN managed 220-350Mbps – but it's a long way behind the leaders. Hide.me's OpenVPN downloads reached 550-580Mbps, for instance, and Mullvad stretched to 700-710Mbps.

There's another problem. While HMA only supports OpenVPN, most of the competition also have WireGuard, and that can make a huge difference. CyberGhost reached 300-415Mbps with OpenVPN, for instance, but when we switched to WireGuard, it managed 830-850Mbps. It's not alone, either: most WireGuard-equipped providers hit download speeds of 500-900Mbps in recent tests.

If your internet connection or device can't handle 100Mbps, let alone 1Gbps, this probably won't matter much. But if you're looking for more performance, perhaps to set up the VPN on a router and handle multiple connections, HMA might not deliver.

• Save yourself a packet with our exclusive HideMyAss! offer

Netflix and streaming

Point your browser at the HideMyAss! website and you'll learn that the service allows you to "stream your favorite TV shows from wherever you are in the world using one of our dedicated streaming servers." Sounds good, but is it true?

The HideMyAss! Windows client enables filtering its location list to display only streaming servers, and right now there are just six of these: four in the US, one in London and another in Frankfurt. That's not exactly a lot of choice, and we wondered whether that would make it easier for streaming websites to detect and block them.

HMA got off to a bad start, when BBC iPlayer detected it and warned content was 'not available in our region.' That's disappointing, as HideMyAss! got us into the site in our last review.

HMA also failed with US Netflix. That's no great surprise – it beats even some of the best VPN providers – but HideMyAss! couldn't unblock Amazon Prime Video or Disney Plus, either.

That's a poor result, and you can do much better elsewhere. CyberGhost, ExpressVPN, Hotspot Shield, NordVPN, ProtonVPN, Surfshark and others all unblocked 100% of our test platforms.

Support

The HideMyAss! support site offers a wide range of resources, including setup guides, a searchable knowledgebase, FAQs, a web forum, and 24/7 live chat for anything urgent.

The web content isn't as in-depth or well-presented as some of the competition. ExpressVPN has a host of detailed setup guides, all easily accessible in a couple of clicks from the support page. HideMyAss! doesn't organize its articles quite as neatly, and when you do find them, there's less information, and occasionally some questionable points.

For example, various troubleshooting guides include recommendations for disabling Windows driver signing checks, resetting the Winsock catalog and other technical steps. This isn't necessarily bad advice if you know what you're doing, but it's also seriously advanced stuff with implications for your security and other apps, and we wouldn't expect it to appear in a general installation tutorial for all levels of user.

HideMyAss! has a community forum, but it's best avoided. There are very few questions, and if the support team respond, it's usually only to say they've created a ticket, which you could have done yourself.

If you can't wait, live chat is on hand for swift assistance. We asked about a Windows installation issue, and within minutes, a support agent began giving us a helpful and accurate solution. That works for us, and overall, we think HideMyAss! should be able to help you solve most common VPN issues.

HideMyAss! review: Final verdict

HMA has more network locations than just about anyone else, its apps are easy-to-use, and we have to applaud any provider that puts itself through a no-logging audit. But below-par speeds and a poor unblocking performance make HMA difficult to recommend, and with no sign of service improvements for a very long time, that seems unlikely to change any time soon.

• Take your pick from today's best VPNs

The antivirus maker Avast has upgraded its all-in-one protection service Avast One with new features aimed at protecting users from online scams, fraud and other personal privacy threats.

According to a recent study carried out by the company, the three most common ways consumers and businesses are targeted by scammers include email (62%), text messages (52%) and through social media (29%). For this reason, Avast has decided to add scam and online fraud protection to its flagship antivirus offering.

The update to Avast One also includes a new feature launching on Windows and Android called Online Safety Score that provides users with regular feedback on their digital habits and gives them personalized tips to improve their online and device safety. Meanwhile, Privacy Advisor is an educational tool that offers simple step-by-step instructions to adjust and improve privacy settings on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other popular online platforms.

Chief product officer at Avast, Vita Santrucek explained in a press release how the company’s new additions to Avast One can help users feel safer and less at risk of online scams, saying:

"We know scams are a cause for concern for a lot of people so our goal with the new additions to the Avast One suite was to help them regain confidence and peace of mind when using the internet and their devices. Not only are scams and other forms of online fraud more pervasive, they're also more sophisticated, to the extent it's really hard to differentiate between content that's benign and content designed to exploit. Scammers take advantage of current affairs to reel people in, for example, two years ago we saw a spike in Covid-related scams, and in February and March this year we saw scams related to the Ukraine war."

Email Guardian, Scam Protection and Smart VPN 

In addition to Online Safety Score and Privacy Advisor, the free version of Avast One, Avast One Essential, is also getting another new feature in the form of Email Guardian.

Email Guardian blocks malicious attachments in emails and prevents users from sending these dangerous files to others. When a malicious attachment is detected, an alert is displayed and from here, a user can still choose to download a file if they think it is safe on Windows and Mac.

The paid versions of Avast One, Avast One Individual and Family, are getting two new features in the form of Scam Protection and Smart VPN. 

As the name suggests, Scam Protection helps protect users from scams by notifying them when they receive a text or social media message where a potentially dangerous link has been identified. If the link is safe, it’s opened automatically in a user’s browser but if it’s dangerous, the user is notified so that they can decide whether they want to ignore the link or proceed at their own risk.

Avast’s Smart VPN feature allows paid users to configure the company’s VPN to automatically connect during certain situations such as when joining a public Wi-Fi network or when logging onto a banking website.

Avast One is available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria and with Avast One Essential, users can test out the service for themselves first before upgrading to a paid plan.

• Keep your devices out of the hands of cybercriminals with the best malware removal software

If you’re after one of the best antivirus apps around, then there’s a narrow selection of vendors to choose from, with Avast being one of the top-ranked picks here at TechRadar Pro.

Avast One is the firm’s impressive internet security suite which comes in the form of a free version (Essential) and paid variants (Individual and Family). The latter premium incarnations have all the same features, it’s just that the Family plan provides coverage for more devices (30, rather than five).

Note that the free version of Avast One doesn’t have nearly as many features – and allows only limited use of the bundled VPN.

So what do you get if you commit to a paid-for Avast One plan? A lot as it happens, and in this article, we’re going to list the full array of features that the premium spin of Avast One offers the buyer, going through and discussing those capabilities in-depth.

Antivirus engine

Avast One wouldn’t be much of a security suite if it didn’t defend your device against malware, and it does indeed have a robust antivirus engine delivering this core protection. You get on-demand scans and real-time protection against viruses and other malware, and Avast boasts that its intelligence network – which leverages info on threats faced by other Avast users – helps bolster its malware shielding, alongside heuristics (spotting threats by their suspicious behavior).

The quality of this protection is excellent, too, as evidenced by reports from independent test labs which consistently rank Avast as one of the top-rated products among antivirus apps.

Ransomware Protection

Ransomware is a really nasty type of malware which can lock away all your precious data, and Avast One provides an extra layer of protection to fend off such attacks. This automatically secures any folders with documents in them – or you can manually add other folders with particularly sensitive or critical contents – and strengthens the defenses in place for all these marked files, making a notable difference as we observed in our Avast One review.

Firewall

This is another expected element of basic protection from any security suite, with Avast’s firewall playing the part of a watchdog overseeing traffic to and from your PC. The free version of Avast only has a basic firewall, but with the premium editions of Avast One you also get alerts for port scans – that’s when hackers are scanning your PC for open ports that they might be able to leverage in order to compromise your system – and other advanced features.

All these can help keep you safer from potential attacks when on insecure networks like public Wi-Fi in a local cafe, for example.

Web Shield

This feature gives you protection when browsing the web, blocking any malicious content you might stumble across, and that includes downloads which contain malware. We found this module did very well in terms of defending against phishing sites, and independent testers agree with our conclusions, so this is a definite strong point for Avast One.

Web Hijack Guard

This is another element of web protection which is put in place to defeat DNS hijacking. That’s when your browser traffic gets redirected to a malicious website that looks like the authentic site, with the aim of luring you to type in your password, or maybe credit card number, which would then be stolen – except Avast One steps in and stops this hijacking before it happens.

Sensitive Data Shield

The Sensitive Data Shield finds any files on your drives which may contain sensitive data – by which we mean info like email addresses, passwords or bank account details – and it stops any other people who use that same device from accessing those files. In short, it makes sure that your private details stay private.

VPN

Avast One comes with a bundled VPN to give you extra security, keeping you safer when online as well as helping to maintain your privacy. On top of that, the VPN can be used to access streaming services you wouldn’t otherwise be able to use (due to geoblocking), and it has a multitude of other VPN benefits.

The SecureLine VPN is powered by HideMyAss! and offers unlimited data with Avast One’s premium plans, plus a reasonable choice of 55 locations (across 34 countries, at the time of writing). It’s also backed by a kill switch (a safety net that kicks in to protect your identity and data should the VPN connection drop somehow).

Another neat touch here is that Avast will intelligently advise you of when the VPN should be turned on (like when using public Wi-Fi, or with certain websites, for example particularly sensitive tasks such as online banking). All in all, the VPN is a big value add to the Avast One package.

Data breach monitoring

This security suite can tap into a database of past data breaches to check if any of your online accounts have been compromised, plus Avast One boasts breach monitoring which keeps an eye on new breaches as they occur, again to ensure none of your details are involved and it alert you if they are.

Browser Protection

This prevents other people from accessing any passwords stored in your browser, keeping them safe and secure by blocking any such attempt (though arguably you might be better off using a password manager for better password security still).

Webcam Protection

Another Avast watchdog guards access to your webcam, and should malware try to utilize the camera, it’ll be prevented from doing so. There are a range of different settings for this feature, too, including the ability to totally disable the webcam if needed.

Privacy Advisor

This tool provides a bunch of easy-to-follow guides to help you tighten up privacy levels across a range of websites and online services.

For example, with Facebook, Privacy Advisor has a guide to show you how to control who can see your profile. Or there’s instructions for those on Twitter to limit who can see their tweets, and a guide to stop Google targeting adverts at you, plus a bunch of other useful stuff that many folks may well appreciate.

Software Updater

This module of the suite checks over any installed apps it supports – some 50 popular programs – and if updates are missing, it will automatically download and apply them. This means you don’t need to worry about keeping that software up-to-date, as you’ll always have the latest updates and therefore security fixes and new features.

Driver Updater

This does the same job as the above Software Updater, but it checks through your hardware drivers to make sure they’re fully updated.

Disk Cleaner

Avast One’s cleaning module scans your drive for any unnecessary or junk files, and will purge them to free up some extra storage space. In our testing, Avast’s Disk Cleaner did a better job than the built-in cleaning utility which comes with Windows.

Performance Boost

This feature keeps tabs on all the apps running on your PC, and allows you to temporarily freeze any of them. This means that the program in question won’t use background resources, thus helping to boost the speed of your system a little, until you open the application again, at which point Avast will restore the software to its normal way of running. In short, this can be a useful way of pepping up your system performance to some extent, but with caveats as we discuss in detail in our Avast One review.

As cyber criminals get cleverer and more devious, it's never been more pertinent to ensure that your online devices are safe and sound using antivirus software. And, thanks to a special offer on the Avast One security suite, you can do so without spending a stack.

Avast One is an 'all-in-one service' that seeks to offer comprehensive security for all of your or your family's devices. A single subscription covers at least five devices, and bundles in a VPN, firewall, private browsing, password protection and a host of added extras - see the full list below.

• US: Get Avast One for a year for $99.99 $50.28 (50% off)
• UK: Get Avast One for a year for $39.99
• Australia: Get Avast One for a year for $139.99 $70.68 (50% off)

Avast One's litany of protection tools can be used across Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices, with an Individual subscription covering five and a family plan covering up to 30 for six users.

And, if you want to try Avast One on for size, you can do so knowing that there's a 30-day money back guarantee if you change your mind.

Avast One special antivirus offers

Avast One features: what you get with this deal

Device:

• Antivirus, ransomware protection and malware prevention
• Advanced firewall
• Sensitive Data Shield to ensure your private documents aren't compromised
• Behavior Shield to monitor suspicious behavior in real time
• Wi-Fi vulnerability alerts
• Web Hijack Guard for safer internet banking and shopping

Privacy:

• VPN for streaming and security with servers in 55 locations across 34 countries and secure kill switch
• Connection and Network advisors
• Advertiser tracking prevention and digital fingerprint masking
• Data breach checking
• Privacy Advisor
• Password protection and data breach monitoring
• Webcam protection

Smooth performance:

• App checker to keep all apps and drivers up-to-date
• Clean-up tools
• Speed optimization tool

Antivirus software creates a digital shield that secures your device by preventing malicious files from gaining a foothold. These files can contain malware, ransomware, and snooping software that explores your operating system for sensitive data, before stealing or deleting it - sometimes leaving you with a device that no longer works.

Our team of cybersecurity experts have conducted hands on testing on all the antivirus software listed below, combing their expertise with industry-standard testing methods and EICAR files to check detection and quarantine effectiveness. We then cross reference these findings with the findings of testing laboratories such as AV-TEST and AV-Comparatives. Our recommendations combine real-world experience and technical expertise to provide a well-rounded perspective on each recommendation.

Our findings show that Bitdefender is the best antivirus for most people, with outstanding performance above the competition in our testing. If you want a highly-effective antivirus that is easy to use and won't cost the earth, Bitdefender is the go-to choice. But Norton and McAfee are also highly rated in our testing, especially if you want a package with all the features.

If you are looking for antivirus on a budget, we have also rounded up the best free antivirus software, alongside device-specific recommendations for Mac antivirus software and Android antivirus apps.

Today's Best Antivirus Deal

Quick List

The Best Antivirus Software

Best overall

Use if:

✔️ You want a full antivirus toolkit: Bitdefender's features hunt down malware and protect against ransomware without disrupting your browsing.

✔️ You don't want to sacrifice too many resources: Bitdefender doesn't take up a lot of storage space, so you don't need to worry about sacrificing system speed for security.

✔️ You're new to antivirus solutions: Bitdefender is easy to install and use. Its real-time protection is even enabled from the get-go.

Don't use if:

❌ You want quick scans: initial and deep scans take almost an hour to complete (five times longer than other antivirus software on average). Thankfully, you'll still be able to work, play, and browse when they're running.

❌ You want an unlimited VPN: The VPN has a 200 MB/day usage cap, making it unsuited for constant protection. If you want an effective antivirus with an unlimited VPN, try McAfee.

❌ You're already infected with malware: Bitdefender isn't as effective when it comes to removing threats already attacking your system. For current infections, try Malwarebytes.

Our thoughts:

Bitdefender is more than just antivirus software – it can be a life security suite depending on the plan you choose. It consistently impresses with its ability to identify threats and stop them in their tracks, and has scored very highly in our own testing and testing done by third-party laboratories.

Bitdefender Total Security includes parental controls, a VPN, a vulnerability scanner, and a dedicated browser. The software is remarkably easy to use and runs on most major operating systems. Most of the features will come enabled by default, making it a hassle-free installation process – just click and go.

▶ Try Bitdefender Total Security free for 30 days

Bottom line: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

🔒 Bitdefender is the best antivirus package on the market – and has been for a few years. It combines watertight security tools with straightforward apps and, best of all, offers fantastic value for money.

Read our full Bitdefender review here.

Best for families

Use if:

✔️ You need family protection: the 5 device coverage with the inclusion of a password manager, parental control app, and 50GB secure cloud backup makes it a great option for families.

✔️ You want multi-device protection: keep your mobile phones and tablets secure with sleek apps that include Wi-Fi security.

✔️ You need to secure your browser: Norton hides your IP with a VPN, and your browsing history, so you can surf the web without leaving an identifiable trail.

Don't use if:

❌ You're on a budget: Norton is hardly a budget option – even with its new-user deals – and only gets pricier on renewal.

❌ You want a stellar VPN: while solid, Norton Secure VPN doesn't top our best VPN list.

Our thoughts:

Norton is a household name in the antivirus industry with very strong testing results. In our testing, it detected all our sample files, and has consistently high scores across independent testing labs.

Norton 360 Deluxe goes beyond Norton's award-winning malware protection and includes a range of tools for family security. Deluxe is perfect if you are looking for family protection, as you can protect up to 5 devices, store precious memories in the generous cloud backup, and use parental controls to ensure your children are safe online.

▶ Try Norton 360 Deluxe and get a 60-day money-back guarantee

Bottom line: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🔒 Norton excels when it comes to basic malware protection and offers some awesome tools for families – like its parental control app, VPN, and password manager. These extras make it an expensive option, however.

Read our full Norton review here.

Best for mobile

Use if:

✔️ Mobile security is your priority: McAfee's mobile apps provide all-around protection that you can take on the go.

✔️ You want to protect your identity: check out a raft of tools and advanced features designed to safeguard against identity theft and phishing.

✔️ You need good network protection: keep hackers out of your home network system with an intelligent firewall for all of your devices.

Don't use if:

❌ You're on a budget: McAfee is a big name with a big price tag, and particularly pricey on renewal.

❌ You use a Mac: although it does run on Mac computers, the solution still feels a little clunky compared to its Windows version.

❌ You want built-in parental controls: you'll need to pay extra to access parental controls, adding extra cost to a solution that's already pretty expensive.

Our thoughts:

McAfee is another name that frequently tops the tests in our own trials and third-party testing. McAfee has a solid reputation for antivirus protection and consistently scores top marks.

McAfee+ goes beyond simple antivirus protection and includes a firewall, password manager, file shredder, and unlimited VPN, all in just the basic tier. The mobile apps are well-crafted and easy to use, making them a top choice for those who want protection on the go. You can also use the Online Account Cleanup tool to check if any of your online accounts are having their data hoovered up by less than reputable sites, and help you delete them.

▶ Try McAfee+ with its 30-day money-back guarantee

Bottom line: ⭐⭐⭐½

🔒 McAfee is undoubtedly expensive, but it earns its spot in our top picks with standout mobile apps, advanced features, and its prioritization of identity protection.

Read our full McAfee review here.

Best for Wi-Fi security

Use if:

✔️ You have a lot of smart devices: F-Secure has one of the best network protection tools to secure every gadget connected to your home internet.

✔️ You value speed: scans balance speed with thoroughness without sacrificing either.

✔️ You need a VPN: the F-Secure VPN does have its limitations, but it's a useful tool to have in a pinch and it isn't limited by a usage cap.

Don't use if:

❌ You're new to antivirus: the dashboard is very text-heavy, which can be overwhelming, and it's not the easiest tool to install.

❌ You need Chromebook protection: unfortunately, F-Secure doesn't offer a Chromebook app – meaning you'll have to look elsewhere.

❌ You don't want to be slowed down: you might experience slower load times when opening programs or browsing the web, which can be frustrating.

Our thoughts:

We frequently write about smart devices being taken over by hackers, so F-Secure is a sight for sore eyes in this respect. While F-Secure doesn't quite rival the scores of other antivirus software in testing – and occasionally throws up a few false alarms – it provides great protection for edge, IoT, and smart devices connected to your Wi-Fi network.

One of the standout features of F-Secure Total is the included unlimited VPN. Many other providers restrict an unlimited VPN behind the significantly higher priced top tier plans, so its refreshing to see an affordable antivirus software with an unlimited VPN.

▶ Try F-Secure Total for 30 days free

Bottom line: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🔒 F-secure takes some getting used to, but all of the most important security and privacy tools are there – including incredible network protection and 24/7 live support.

Read our full F-Secure review here.

Best for ad blocking

Use if:

✔️ You want a reliable ad-blocker: Avira includes a handy ad blocker to keep your browsing fast and hassle-free.

✔️ You'd like to try before buying: Avira's free plan is limited, but it gives you a good taste of what to expect if you choose to upgrade.

✔️ You want configurability: Avira gives users plenty of ways to tailor their security experience.

Don't use if:

❌ You use a lot of locally saved apps: during our testing, we found that Avira causes apps to launch more slowly.

❌ You need mobile protection: most of Avira's packages aren't available for mobile devices – and those that are have a hefty price tag.

❌ You want optimal PC performance: Avira has a tendency to take a bit out of your device's performance.

Our thoughts:

Avira performs really well in testing, being able to detect our own bespoke EICAR files and performing well against existing and new threats in tests done by third parties.

A standout point is the included ad blocker, which significantly improves web page load times and general user experience. Avira Internet Security also includes a handy bargain-hunting tool to help you get the best deals when shopping online. While it does include a system optimizer tool and Potentially Unwanted Application (PUA) shield to reduce PC slowdown, it does tend to take up a few more resources than we would like – but overall, it is a solid antivirus solution.

▶ Try Avira antivirus for free

Bottom line: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🔒 Avira has a lot of handy tools that can be configured down to the last detail and a free plan you can use to try before you buy – however, it's not the best pick for mobile devices.

Read our full Avira review here.

Best for gamers

Use if:

✔️ You want the best malware protection: Avast came out on top in all of our malware-blocking tests.

✔️ Gaming is your priority: block untrustworthy incoming connections with a handy gaming mode, which is enabled by default.

✔️ You want to try before buying: Avast's free plan has its limitations, but effectively showcases the product's capabilities.

Don't use if:

❌ You don't want to delete unwanted apps: Avast will do its very best to install its own internet browser and make it your new default, which is slightly frustrating.

❌ You want affordable VPN access: Avast packages it's VPN as a separate product, and only includes it in the highest tier Avast One plan, putting it out of reach for those looking for a budget antivirus with VPN.

❌ You need clear warnings: at times, unwarranted warnings can pop up with no clear way to stop them

Our thoughts:

Avast is one of the best-performing antivirus software providers, scoring top marks in our testing and achieving impressive results in testing performed by third-party pros.

Avast One is designed to be a simple all-in-one app that does everything it says on the tin, and if you want it to do more, it can. The app automatically goes into gaming mode so that you can squeeze all the performance you need out of your device without your security taking a hit. Avast One comes with more features than we can list, but some notable inclusions are dark web monitoring, scam detection, and an advanced firewall to keep hackers out of your network.

Bottom line: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

🔒 Avast One is a malware-blocking powerhouse that stops threats dead in their tracks. It won't slow your device to a crawl, either, and is incredibly easy to use – a great pick for antivirus first-timers.

Read our full Avast review here.

Best for malware removal

Use if:

✔️ You have an existing malware infection: when it comes to getting rid of threats that are already on your computer, Malwarebytes is unbeatable.

✔️ You want to see real-time security reports: check out what the antivirus is doing, at any time, with detailed insights.

✔️ You want multi-device protection: protect between 1 and 10 devices without spending a fortune.

Don't use if:

❌ You need flawless detection: Malwarebytes can struggle to pinpoint and resolve new threats.

❌ You want to protect more than Windows devices: while the solution is compatible with other operating systems, it's also more limited.

❌ You want a full-featured antivirus protection suite: Malwarebytes doesn't provide the plethora of features that other solutions include, such as a password manager or parental controls.

Our thoughts:

Malwarebytes has always been my choice when it comes to getting rid of a malware infection, but it wouldn't be my go-to when it comes to real-time protection. In our own testing (and independent testing), it scored in the middle ground of what I would expect.

But, as I said, if you currently have malware lurking on your device, then Malwarebytes is a solid tool for getting rid of it. The software will provide real-time protection reports, scam protection, and even include AI-powered protection. Some features are only available on the Windows app, or on the highest priced plans, however.

▶ Get Malwarebytes free edition

Bottom line: ⭐⭐⭐½

🔒 Malwarebytes excels at removing malware already on your device, but can fall short in real-time protection.