Strong Web Filter: Avira Free vs Sophos Home vs Bitdefender Free?

Thirio

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Hi guys first time posting here appreciate the forum it taught me a lot about cyber security. My question today is out of these 3 products which offers the better protection (in your opinion?). Having a strong web filter and file detection is important to me. Also taking into consideration which company responds to new threats the fastest. Thank you. :)
 

Ink

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If I am not mistaken, none have a WebFilter. However, Avira Browser Safety and Bitdefender TrafficLight are both extensions for popular browsers.

Edited thread title to reflect contents of post.
 

Thirio

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If I am not mistaken, none have a WebFilter. However, Avira Browser Safety and Bitdefender TrafficLight are both extensions for popular browsers.

Edited thread title to reflect contents of post.
Bitdefender and Sophos have a web filter and Avira has the browser extension which im not a fan of. But I would use it if its better than the others.

 
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Ink

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I thought Bitdefender Free only provided Anti-Phishing Protection. How does it compare to Avira and Sophos? What's your favourite?
 
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Arequire

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In terms of web of web protection I'd rank them:
  • Bitdefender
  • Sophos
  • Avira
In terms of detection of malware there's some things to consider:
Bitdefender Free has good signatures and has Active Threat Control (behavioural monitoring/blocking) which I'd argue puts it at the top of the three you mentioned in terms of protection against malware.

Avira has top-notch signatures but it lacks any substantial zero-day protection besides cloud analysis which makes it good for pairing but I wouldn't advise anyone to use it on its own.

From what I've seen Sophos lacks in both departments. I've never seen Sophos do particularly well with its signatures and while it claims that it
goes far beyond simply preventing known malware
and
analyzes suspicious behaviors and activities from files and programs, using real-time threat intelligence from SophosLabs
I've never actually seen any behavioural blocking from it.
I'm not a tester though so others can no doubt provide a more complete picture than I can in terms of Sophos Home.

Edit: If your main focus is on web filtering, Fortinet provides some pretty outstanding web protection that I'd say tops all three you've listed. Unfortunately its lacking in the detection department and its installation takes an absolute aeon. (I'm talking like a 15 minute installation process. It's baffling.)
 
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Gdant

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AFAIK, both Sophos and bitdefender has good web filtering compare to Avira. It is like sometimes in a test, one perform better and sometimes vice-versa. So, I think you should not choose antivirus based on only web filtering, consider overall protection of AV too.
If you are concern much about web filtering then eset has one of the best web filtering abilities.
 
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Arequire

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I thought Bitdefender Free only provided Anti-Phishing Protection. How does it compare to Avira and Sophos? What's your favourite?
As far as I'm aware it provides the same web filtering as the paid versions. Blocks malware, phishing and fraud sites.
 
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Ink

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Ummm, they do Spawn o_O
Take my answers with a grain of salt, other forums say I provide incorrect information. /s

It's been a while since I tried the first release of Sophos Home and Bitdefender v1.
Although I did post about Web Protection for Avira (another thread), people say it's been replaced with Avira Browser Safety, which is Free to use without Avira Antivirus.
 

Thirio

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Edit: If your main focus is on web filtering, Fortinet provides some pretty outstanding web protection that I'd say tops all three you've listed. Unfortunately its lacking in the detection department and its installation takes an absolute aeon. (I'm talking like a 15 minute installation process. It's baffling.)
Good mention of Fortinet their web protection seems like their strong suit. But last time I tried it, as you said the 15 minute installation was there and I felt a noticeable performance hit. Also if they only use signatures it could be a problem.
 

Arequire

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Good mention of Fortinet their web protection seems like their strong suit. But last time I tried it, as you said the 15 minute installation was there and I felt a noticeable performance hit. Also if they only use signatures it could be a problem.
It does have "Cloud Based Behavior Scanning" but I've never personally seen it in action.
 

Xsjx

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Feb 21, 2017
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In terms of web of web protection I'd rank them:
  • Bitdefender
  • Sophos
  • Avira
In terms of detection of malware there's some things to consider:
Bitdefender Free has good signatures and has Active Threat Control (behavioural monitoring/blocking) which I'd argue puts it at the top of the three you mentioned in terms of protection against malware.

Avira has top-notch signatures but it lacks any substantial zero-day protection besides cloud analysis which makes it good for pairing but I wouldn't advise anyone to use it on its own.
Pls stop saying things that isnt treu.
Look here:
Q&A - Avira's detection methods
ALso no thing to do but Avira free with Avira browser safety is here just the best option its light Privacy friendly and the best detection rate ( Product of the year)
 

Arequire

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Pls stop saying things that isnt treu.
Look here:
Q&A - Avira's detection methods
ALso no thing to do but Avira free with Avira browser safety is here just the best option its light Privacy friendly and the best detection rate ( Product of the year)
Q&A - Avira's detection methods
Read my post.

Also, being "Product of the Year" by some professional testing agency is absolutely meaningless. All it does is gives AV vendors the ability to slap those awards all over their homepage and make dubious claims about how their products are the second coming of the antivirus industry. It's all marketing bull.
 
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Exterminator

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Hi guys first time posting here appreciate the forum it taught me a lot about cyber security. My question today is out of these 3 products which offers the better protection (in your opinion?). Having a strong web filter and file detection is important to me. Also taking into consideration which company responds to new threats the fastest. Thank you. :)
Please keep this topic to the OP's question.
Personal opinions and the reasons why as the OP is not looking for Independent Company product reports.
Please help the OP with his question by replying with your choice and your explanation.
Other posts will be considered off topic and deleted.
Thanks :)
 

kev216

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Sophos Home really does have behaviour protection next to their signatures. I'm using Sophos myself right now and I've seen some alerts where it told me about suspicious behaviour of processes after I ran malware samples that were not in their signatures. According to their blog it should be kind of a automated HIPS. It also uses the Sophos cloud, next to offline signatures.
They also have a really strong webfilter which detects both phishing and malware sites.

Avira really has great signatures, but it lacks some behaviour detection, which on the other hand Sophos and Bitdefender has. Bitdefender is known too for its really good signatures.

In terms of web filter they are all great, but if you look at the whole picture of the AV's, my choice would be Bitdefender or Sophos.
 

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