The entry-level antivirus from Bitdefender boasts the name Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, and the Plus is very much deserved.
This tool totally handles all the basic antivirus tasks effectively, and then goes way beyond in terms of additional security features.
Feature-wise, it could take on many security suites and win.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus remains a top choice when it comes to protecting your PC's security.
Some antivirus products, such as Cylance Smart Antivirus and F-Secure, stick strictly with the essentials, wiping out existing malware infestations and defending against new attacks.
Bitdefender, by contrast, packs a huge collection of security-centric features, among them password management, enhanced security for online transactions, ransomware protection, and even a VPN.
To be sure you realize how much you're getting, the installer runs a slideshow detailing the features while doing its job.
At $39.99 per year for one license, Bitdefender's pricing matches that of many competitors.
More than a dozen others go for roughly the same price, among them Kaspersky, Webroot, Trend Micro, and ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
F-Secure charges $39.99 too, but that gets you three licenses for the price.
Three Bitdefender licenses will run you $59.99 per year.
You can also get five licenses for $69.99, or 10 for $79.99.
McAfee costs $59.99 per year, the same as Bitdefender's three-license price, but with McAfee you can protect every Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household.
This would have been the 2021 edition of the Bitdefender product line.
However, for some time the company has been continuously refining the feature set of each product rather than holding back new features for one big version release.
The latest products no longer carry the year as a version number.
Bitdefender's main window displays a security dashboard, with a left-rail menu that offers detailed access to features.
Security recommendations occupy the top of the rest of the window, with a collection of what the product calls Quick Actions below.
The default Quick Actions let you launch a quick, system, or vulnerability scan, open the VPN, and configure Safepay online protection.
You can configure the product to put the File Shredder or Wallet password manager in the main display, in place of an action that’s not your fave.
Clicking Protection, Privacy, or Utilities in the left menu brings up detailed pages of features and settings, though some of the features only available at the suite level.
For example, on the Protection page the Firewall and Antispam items require an upgrade.
Under Privacy, the parental advisor and camera / mic protection aren’t available.
Under Utilities, you can use the file shredder or configure the Profiles system, but that’s all.
For year, Bitdefender's Autopilot mode quietly handled security issues without requiring user intervention.
Currently, Autopilot takes a more active role.
The aim is to make sure you get the full benefit of this product's many, many features.
For example, during this review it suggested that we run a scan for outdated (and hence vulnerable) applications.
Autopilot might also suggest that you explore the Wallet password manager, or check the privacy of your online accounts.
Glowing Lab Test Scores
Three of the four labs that we follow include Bitdefender in their testing.
The researchers at AV-Comparatives perform a wide variety of tests; we follow four of them.
Products that pass a test earn Standard certification, while those that do significantly more than the minimum receive Advanced or even Advanced+ certification.
Bitdefender took Advanced+ in all four tests, the only product I follow to recently achieve this status.
Avira Free Security came close, with three Advanced+ and one Advanced.
In the three-part test regularly reported by AV-Test Institute, products can earn up to six points for good protection against malware, little effect on performance, and good usability (meaning minimal false positives).
Bitdefender earned the full six points for protection and performance, but lost a half-point for a few false positives.
At 17.5 points out of a possible 18, it still earned the designation Top Product, along with five others.
F-Secure Anti-Virus and Trend Micro topped the list this time, with a perfect 18 points.
The tests performed by London-based MRG-Effitas are a bit different from the rest.
To pass this lab's banking Trojans test, a product needs a perfect score; anything less is failure.
Another test using a wide variety of malware offers two passing levels.
If a product absolutely blocks every malware installation attempt, it passes at Level 1.
If some malware gets through, but is eliminated within 24 hours, that earns Level 2.
Anything else is a fail.
Bitdefender passed the banking test, as did just over half the tested products.
It also received Level 1 certification in the broad-spectrum test, along with Kasperky, Sophos Home Premium, Norton, and six others.
SE Labs attempts to simulate the real world of malware as closely as possible for testing purposes, using a capture/replay system to present each product with a real-world Web-based attack.
Certification from this lab comes at five levels, AAA, AA, A, B, and C.
Alas, Bitdefender doesn't appear in the latest report from SE Labs.
We have devised an algorithm that normalizes all the test results onto a 10-point scale and returns an aggregate lab score, as long as the product has results from at least two labs.
Avast, Avira, and Kaspersky Anti-Virus are among the products that appear in reports from all four labs.
In terms of aggregate score, Avira and Norton rule that group, with 9.8 of 10 possible points.
Bitdefender holds the top score among products tested by three labs, a near-perfect 9.9.
Impressive Online Protection
Even though the labs heap praise on Bitdefender, we still need our own hands-on experience.
Our malware protection test starts when we open the folder containing an eclectic collection of malware samples whose behavior we've analyzed.
At this point, Bitdefender displayed a notification, saying, "Disinfection in progress… please wait until complete."
This proved to be a long wait—more than 10 minutes.
When the antivirus finished, it offered a link to display just what it accomplished.
The real-time on-access protection system eliminated 83 percent of the samples on sight.
We continued the test by launching those samples that survived this initial culling.
Bitdefender caught many of the remaining samples at or shortly after launch, though in several cases it didn't prevent the installer from planting executable files on the test system.
Bitdefender detected 89 percent of the samples and scored 8.6 of 10 possible points, which isn't great.
However, when the labs give a product top ratings, we give their results more weight than our hands-on tests.
Tested with this same set of samples Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus achieved 100 percent detection and scored a perfect 10 points.
G Data came close, with 9.8 points.
Because gathering and analyzing malware takes a significant amount of time effort, we use the same sample set for many months.
To check how well an antivirus handles the very latest attacks, we use a feed of malware-hosting URLs supplied by MRG-Effitas.
Typically, these are no more than a day or two.
We launch each one in turn, discarding any URLs that are already defunct, and record whether the antivirus diverts the browser from the dangerous URL, eliminates the malicious download, or sits on its hands idly, doing nothing.
Bitdefender's Online Threat Protection did a great job, blocking access to 89 percent of the malware-hosting URLs.
The regular antivirus component wiped out another 10 percent at the download phase, for a total of 99 percent protection, the same as Trend Micro and G Data.
McAfee, Sophos, and Vipre Antivirus Plus eked out one more point for 100 percent protection.
Phenomenal Phishing Protection
Malware attacks your computer, or your data, to rake in cash for its creators, but writing malicious code that can get past modern antivirus tools is tough.
Phishing attacks go straight for the most vulnerable component—you, the user.
No coding required; they just need to make a convincing duplicate of a banking site or other sensitive page.
Once you log in to the fake, the fraudsters own your account.
These fraudulent sites quickly get blacklisted and taken down.
But the phishers just build new ones.
Any competent coder could put together a protective system that steers browsers away from sites on a phishing blacklist, but that's not enough in itself.
A really good phishing protection system analyzes pages for signs of fraud, and blocks even those too new to be blacklisted.
Some products, such as Norton, distinguish between blacklisted sites and those identified by analysis.
Bitdefender's Online Threat Protection doesn’t make that distinction, and it proved extremely effective in our testing.
We prepare for this test by scouring phishing-analysis sites for the latest reported frauds, making sure to get a goodly number that are too new for the blacklist.
We launch each in four browsers.
The product under test protects one, of course, while the other three rely on protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.
If one or more browsers can't load a page, we discard it.
If the page isn't clearly attempting to steal login credentials, likewise we toss it.
When we have enough data points, we run the numbers.
Bitdefender detected almost every one of the fraudulent pages, coming in with a 99 percent detection rate, the same as McAfee AntiVirus Plus and Norton.
Kaspersky and Trend Micro did even better, managing to detect and block 100 percent of the frauds.
Network Threat Prevention
Bitdefender’s Network Threat Protection component works alongside Online Threat Protection to detect and fend off attacks on security vulnerabilities in the operating system and popular applications.
This sort of protection is more commonly associated with a firewall, but a few antivirus products such as Bitdefender and Norton include it.
To see this feature in action, we bombarded the test system with 30-odd exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool.
This collection includes exploits aimed at Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and several Adobe products, among others.
Bitdefender flagged 45 percent of the pages hosting these attacks as dangerous, and its antivirus component nabbed another 29 percent by identifying the malware payload.
Its total score of 74 percent is very good.
Some products flag exploits using their official CVE name.
Bitdefender didn’t do so in its warnings, but when I checked the logs, I found plenty of detail.
Of the exploits it detected, Bitdefender identified 60 percent by name.
Norton AntiVirus Plus is typically the big winner in this test, detecting well over 80 percent and identifying the majority by name.
Exploit protection isn't a core antivirus component, especially if you keep your operating system and applications up to date, but in Bitdefender's case it's a nice bonus.
See How We Test Security Software
Additional Browser Protection
In addition to the very visible protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites, Bitdefender also includes an Anti-Tracker component.
Anti-Tracker installs as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer.
Do check to make sure it’s installed in all three.
Note that you no longer need to install the separate Traffic Light extension, as the online threat protection system handles the task of marking up search results with colored icons, green for safe, red for dangerous, grey for not yet checked.
When you visit a site that contains ad trackers, site analytics trackers, or other trackers, Bitdefender puts the number of trackers on the extension's toolbar icon.
By default, its active Do Not Track system blocks them all.
You can click for a summary by category, which includes an estimate of the page load time saved.
And you can disable blocking of specific categories.
You'll find similar Do Not Track functionality in a variety of security tools including Abine Blur Premium and Kaspersky Internet Security.
Enhanced Ransomware Protection
No antivirus is perfect.
They'll all occasionally miss a brand-new attack.
Sure, within a few days most security companies push out an update that eliminates the new threat, but once ransomware has wrecked your files, that’s no help.
Bitdefender has been on the cutting edge of ransomware protection, and the latest edition further enhances this technology.
The Advanced Threat Defense feature supplements regular antivirus scanning with behavior-based detection, including detection of ransomware behavior.
Network Threat Prevention blocks the exploit avenues that some ransomware attacks rely on.
At the first hint of a possible ransomware attack, Ransomware Remediation backs up important files, restoring them after Bitdefender neutralizes the attack.
Ransomware of necessity must modify your important files, replacing them with encrypted versions.
One simple defense is to ban all changes to files in protected locations unless the program making the change is authorized.
That’s how Bitdefender’s Safe Files feature used to work.
On detecting a new program, whether it’s a new image editor you installed or a pernicious ransomware attacker, Safe Files would ask you whether to trust the program.
There are a few problems with this technique.
First, it adds a speed bump any time you edit files with a new valid program.
Second, and more important, it relies on the user to decide whether a file is trustworthy.
Maybe you weren’t paying attention.
Maybe your finger slipped, and you clicked Allow by accident.
You could accidentally release an attack.
Bitdefender’s latest edition has retired Safe Files, relying instead on its enhanced Ransomware Remediation.
Testing this protection layer wasn’t easy.
The Bitdefender Shield real-time protection components wiped out all our actual ransomware samples on sight.
To even get a glimpse of the other protective layers, we had to turn off real-time protection.
In fact, we couldn't copy the samples back to the test system without disabling network protection and web protection.
We did make sure to leave Advanced Threat Defense and Ransomware Remediation active.
Almost all our samples are the common file-encrypting ransomware, though we do have one screen locker and one...
