How Good is Avira Pro?

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uxbal

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Sep 10, 2016
20
Hi,

So, I need to protect my computer, had no luck with ESET not working and Panda causing BSOD's, so I'm now evaluating other options for a comprehensive protection (antivirus, antimalware, would be nice to protect banking, web browser and have a firewall) that I have offers to get quite cheap from my local vendors. Since there's no general topic, I'll ask on the subforums of the possible options. So, how good is Avira Pro? How good are their labs and engineers? Are the lab tests really that good?

Any advice would be nice... Thank you.
 

rupeshkj

Level 7
Verified
Oct 31, 2013
345
Its good with one of the best detection rates but you should give Avast free a try!
Here is a short Review of Avira Free 2016 which will give you all info!
 
L

LabZero

Avira has very good signatures.
Their labs and the engineers are good? It seems to me a useless question.
If you mean the AV testing labs, yes they are good but just for themselves.
 
L

Lucent Warrior

Hi,

So, I need to protect my computer, had no luck with ESET not working and Panda causing BSOD's, so I'm now evaluating other options for a comprehensive protection (antivirus, antimalware, would be nice to protect banking, web browser and have a firewall) that I have offers to get quite cheap from my local vendors. Since there's no general topic, I'll ask on the subforums of the possible options. So, how good is Avira Pro? How good are their labs and engineers? Are the lab tests really that good?

Any advice would be nice... Thank you.
Can you please be more specific about why you had no luck with Eset and why Panda is causing BSOD's? Do you have left overs on your system from previous security?
 
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uxbal

Level 1
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Sep 10, 2016
20
ESET didn't allow me to open https sites, and the tutorial on their site with disabling/enabling ssl and root certificate didn't work, and support didn't help at all. So basically I can use it crippled or return it, so I returned it after a 10 day hassle.

With Panda, which I really loved, great interface, not heavy on my laptop, everything was great. As for BSOD's, they were appearing randomly, I couldn't notice the pattern. What did p**s me off is that I sent their support a ticket days ago, and another one, and am yet to receive a reply. That seems unacceptable for me.

edit: I usually clean out all the data from different folders, such as program data, program files and app data in the user folder, so i don't think this should be an issue
 

Evjl's Rain

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Apr 18, 2016
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extremely good signature, quite good scanning speed but doesn't have caching so 2nd scanning speed is slower than the competitives
if malwares cannot not be detected by signature and cloud, system might be infected because behavior blocker I dont think it's good enough
It's quite buggy, memory usage is quite high compared to other free AVs
sometimes, protection is disabled forever not by me although I tried to enable it

I think you should wait for 2017 version. Paying for avira pro 2016 IMHO is a complete waste of money. Pro version is not really better than the free one
 

uxbal

Level 1
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Sep 10, 2016
20
As for the behaviour blocker in Avira - does it even exist, or it's just of such poor quality and performance? I've seen them develop a ProActiv guard, but i don't know if it's not finished, or only unavailable for 64bit systems (how can that happen in 2016 is not known to me).

Thanks
 

Harlequin

Level 1
Verified
Jul 22, 2016
40
I've used Avira Pro for almost ten years and I have never had any problems. In my work environment sometimes I need to plug in literally dozens of third party USB flash drives which are likely to be infected, and Avira has never missed anything. I mean I'm talking about 20-30 instances of malware in one session alone, although lately with the advent of Windows Defender, active in most computers, infections have declined dramatically compared to say five years ago.

How do I know Avira didn't miss anything? Back home from work I would check my computer with on demand scanners such as Malwarebytes Antimalware and HitmanPro which would detect absolutely nothing.

My second most important issue after detection of malware is system impact and again it is very light on my Win 10, the computer speed is virtually unaffected, in several situations, after upgrading to Windows 10 for example, I was able to check the speed of Windows 10 with Windows Defender (Avira uninstalled during the upgrade) and With Avira (with W.D. off).

My Win 10 machine is fairly powerful and with WD on it would noticeably slow down compared to Avira. Now system impact can only be assessed by trial on a specific machine. If it is light on mine it doesn't mean that Avira will be light on all machines...

Memory usage is reasonable IMO (I have 8GB of RAM), scanner speed might be long but then again I scan my system roughly every 3 months and when I go to bed.

Last but hardly least, I found support excellent, recently they replied to an email within 3-4 hours fixing the issue within 2 working days... Oh I forgot last time I had a false positive was about six years ago...

Most AVs are doing a great job nowadays therefore testing a product for system impact is probably the most important issue.
 

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Atlas147

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Jul 28, 2014
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Avira's signatures are great, but that's all they are good for, there is no behavioral blocker, barely any zero day component except a very shy cloud detection module that seems to come out very rarely.

Personally I would choose another AV that has more zero day components like AVG or Avast. If you're really into buying a product, Kaspersky is another good AV solution for you.
 

Harlequin

Level 1
Verified
Jul 22, 2016
40
Personally I would choose another AV that has more zero day components like AVG or Avast.
AVG and Avast are excellent free programs and may have more zero days components, but according to AV Comparatives and AV-Test in the last five years they have consistently scored less than Avira. AVG has improved a lot in the last six months, but detection is still slightly less than Avira.
Real World Protection Test for August (you can check results from February of 2016)
AV-Comparatives - Independent Tests of Anti-Virus Software - Real World Protection Test Overview
 

Harlequin

Level 1
Verified
Jul 22, 2016
40
No AV can be relied on to guarantee 100% security, it is a layer of defense to be used along side other layers. In my case I use Sandboxie and Chrome (Chrome has its own sandbox) and when I want maximum protection I launch Shadow Defender. As I mentioned most AVs nowadays have great detection capabilities and therefore what really matters in the end is how much does the AV impact the host OS.

Avira recently has drawn a lot of criticism for automatically quarantining some suspicious files without asking the user first (in the past this was not the case). The company has replied that the new protocol affords a better protection to the average user who wouldn't know what to do when given a choice. For some this is a deal breaker, although this automation has been adopted long ago by Norton Security and possibly other brands.

I personally have yet to experience such a scenario, therefore it can't be too frequent, and if that ever happens excluding the file would probably solve the problem.
 

Atlas147

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Jul 28, 2014
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AVG and Avast are excellent free programs and may have more zero days components, but according to AV Comparatives and AV-Test in the last five years they have consistently scored less than Avira. AVG has improved a lot in the last six months, but detection is still slightly less than Avira.
Real World Protection Test for August (you can check results from February of 2016)
AV-Comparatives - Independent Tests of Anti-Virus Software - Real World Protection Test Overview

I don't disagree that the tests show Avira surpassing Avast and AVG in terms of detection, however Avira only reacts to known threats where as AVG and Avast have components that help defend against zero day threats. I cannot tell you the number of times I sent in malware from the hub to Avira for analysis with the initial result being "queued for analysis" and later on being sorted as "malware". There are tons of malware that Avira doesn't know about and because they are focusing on signature based detection a lot would be missed until their labs are able to get their hands on a sample.

Not saying that Avast or AVG would definitely win Avira in a detection ratio test, but from my own analysis in the past there are some obvious samples that Avira failed to detect while AVG and Avast both caught them in the VM I was working on.
 

davetenay

Level 2
Verified
Jul 31, 2015
94
I disagree that Avira doesn't have a proactive protection. It simply doesn't have a resident behaviour blocker module, because this task is performed in the cloud, thanks to protection cloud. When it finds a suspicious file that can't determine if malicious based on signatures, it fisrt sends the hash to the Avira servers where it is compared with the Avira cloud database and if the hash is not found, the whole file is sent and analyzed in a few minutes. It's something like Avast cybercapture. The difference is that Avast takes much longer to send back to the user the result. Avira is much faster for what I saw.
 
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novocaine

Level 5
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Aug 19, 2016
200
none uses Avira on Malwarehub nowadays, I am really curious how Avira performs against those samples. in the previous test, Avira performs well in static detection but it doesn't so in dynamic. what if the configuration is tweaked by choosing high heuristic and all files type on system scanner and real-time protection...
 

Soulbound

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Jan 14, 2015
1,761
Before paying for avira, try the free version. Not big difference between paid and free. Avira is know for signatures. In terms of system responsiveness I lighter than others such as vipre fsecure gdata and Kaspersky (with Kaspersky depends on its user configuration), while a bit heavier than ESET, Norton etc.

I personally like some sort of zero day protection but then again you can easily get away with avira for example if your browsing habits are not bad.

All in all try free version for a month before buying
 
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spaceoctopus

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Jul 13, 2014
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Been using Avira antivirus Pro on my pc at work for 2 years now and it never failed to protect the machine.

Some say that Avira is weak on zero-day and behavioural detection. But i think it is incorrect. It simply works differently.
Avira pro has aspects of HIPS. When a malware or program tries to change a certain host, an alerts pops up to tell you that Avira has blocked it.

Some brands use local behavioural analysis while Avira does it in the cloud. When you get a suspected malicious behaviour, it triggers LukeFilewalker scan. After it is completed, you get a pop up indicating the ''suspicious'' programs on your PC.Then you get the possibility to block or quarantine them.

Avira ressembles a lot to Eset. It has excellent signatures, but also, intelligent signatures and focus a lot on advanced heuristics. Instead of just comparing to a database, these signatures try to find malicious behaviors and codes hidden in programs. It is a 'sort of' zero-day and behavioral analysis.

We all have our personal opinions on independent tests, but if you look at Avira, they are always constant and among best. It is a very solid product, and light on the system. Definitely recommended :)
 

Wayner

New Member
Feb 14, 2017
3
I'm coming at this a bit late so I hope someone is still monitoring it. I've used Avira Free in the past and have never had any issues. However, I'm now forced to do more financial transactions online and am curious about Avira Pro which advertises that banking and shopping are included in its protection. Can anyone tell me exactly how the Pro version differs in this regard from the Free which evidently does not provide such protection? Thanks.
 

Ink

Administrator
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Jan 8, 2011
22,361
Can anyone tell me exactly how the Pro version differs in this regard from the Free which evidently does not provide such protection? Thanks.
Landing page for Avira Antivirus Pro does not have any further details. :(

But I don't see why Avira Free cannot protect you well enough if your OS and software are kept up-to-date, with a well maintained Browser against Phishing, Social Engineering and rogue Extensions. And of course a malware-free PC.

You can share your complete security for better feedback, but otherwise I can recommend HTTPS Everywhere for your browser.
Hope this is of some help.
 

sudo -i

Level 4
Verified
Jan 17, 2017
154
I'm coming at this a bit late so I hope someone is still monitoring it. I've used Avira Free in the past and have never had any issues. However, I'm now forced to do more financial transactions online and am curious about Avira Pro which advertises that banking and shopping are included in its protection. Can anyone tell me exactly how the Pro version differs in this regard from the Free which evidently does not provide such protection? Thanks.
Others may disagree, but I think "banking protection" is a gimmick.

The best banking protection:
1. Your PC is clean at all times.
2. You have an anti-logger installed.

HitmanPro.Alert Ransomware Scanner, Anti-Exploit Tool | Download HMP.Alert with CryptoGuard | hitmanpro.com
Keystroke Encryption
Prevents keyloggers form recording passwords
 
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