2006 Antivirus Review

Bit Defender 9

Installation:
The installation of Bit Defender 9 recommends other security products be disabled, and allows you to choose custom installation options. It also tells you it is going to enable “Real Time Virus Reporting”. This ‘feature’ sends the virus information it finds on your computer to its headquarters for evaluation and reporting. This is much like McAfee’s “Virus Map Reporting”. My opinion remains the same, I don’t like any information leaving my computer to be reported on. I will mention that the program provides instructions for deactivating this module after installation. A great feature about Bit Defender 9 is it updates the virus definition files during the installation. It doesn’t wait until after the install and recommend you do it manually; it takes care of it right then and there. The install also automatically scans the Windows directory, as this is where most of the worse viruses plant themselves. After the scan it allows you to view a report, which too many may seem cryptic as it includes things like “I/O Errors”.  It completes with a reboot of the operating system. The install puts a feature, called File Zone, on the desktop that shows scanning activity. Personally I don’t see the benefit of this and when I right clicked on the File Zone and selected “Hide” I discovered it returns to the desktop after a reboot.

Configuration:
The ‘Auto Update’ was set to automatic, and it also was automatically setup to scan the Windows directory. The desktop shortcut sometimes failed to launch the control panel, so we used the taskbar shortcut which seemed to work better. One issue we found, was the application indicated to us that is was updating the virus definition files during the installation but when we checked the control panel afterwards is showed ‘Last Update’ as ‘Never’. The update option also takes some clicking around in the control panel to find, and is not easily found as a default option. After reviewing the log file, it indicated that a spyware application was found. As it a result it cut of Internet connectivity, which may, or may not have been the cause of the false update. Cutting off connectivity prevented us from updating the program, and left us with spyware and no useful security application.

Resources:
Bit Defender 9 took about 58mb of system memory and only 15mb of hard drive space while running seven system processes in the back ground. The scanning engine is slower than others we’ve reviewed, taking thirty six minutes to scan 4gigs of data while using 50 to 80% of the CPU.

BDCOM.EXE 15.6
BDAGENT.EXE 0.8
BDSS.EXE 27.0
BDSWITCH.EXE 1.6
LLVESRV.EXE 3.4
VSSERV.EXE 7.0
XCOMMSVR.EXE 3.1

Ability:
The program was able to stop all ten viruses from planting on the hard drive and there was no need to run a full system scan.

	Real-Time	Full Scan
AOL Trojan	YES	NA
Backdoor – Ambush	YES	NA
DOS-Misoska	YES	NA
Email-LoveLetter	YES	NA
Exploit-GetAdmin	YES	NA
IM Worm-Jitux	YES	NA
MSOfficeVirus-Darkstar	YES	NA
Nuke-Genocide	YES	NA
Trojan-FakeGina	YES	NA
Worm-Doomjuice	YES	NA

(Real-Time: This is the preferred detection method. The virus was stopped as it entered the computer, before it planted itself onto any media such as the hard drive. Full Scan: The virus planted itself onto the media of the computer such as a folder on the hard drive and was found during a scheduled Full Scan. NA means the Full Scan was not needed.)

Uninstalling:
The uninstall process was very quick and smooth with no residue of the application.

Support:
The support is very interesting for Bit Defender 9, as they hand support requests to a company called Element 5. At first I didn’t like that I was being handed off to someone else for support, but the Element 5 process seemed very straight forward and even gave me a number to call if I didn’t want to use the “Submit Question” form available. We were unable to determine the cost for this support.

Price & Options:
The Standard Bit Defender 9 antivirus package will cost you $29.95 for a 1 year subscription. You also have the option of upgrading to their Internet Security package which includes many other security features like spyware and firewall, for $64.95. We hope to compare their Internet Security application to others such as Trend Micro’s later.

Other Notes:
None