Bitdefender Total Security

Bitdefender Total Security is a product by the Romanian company, Bitdefender SRL. It is an antivirus and one of the most popular anti-malware programs, providing protection against malware and other modern threats. Bitdefender runs on Windows, MacOS, iOS and Android. It costs $40 per 1 year as a standard subscription, or $130 per 3 years. The program offers 3 sets of features: protection, privacy and utilities.

Antivirus protection is provided by the following security services:

1. Real-time data protection - against viruses, worms, trojans, ransomwares, zero-day vulnerabilities, rootkits, spyware;
2. Web attack prevention - to block malicious/infected sites, plus anti-fraud filtering system;
3. Firewall - access policy for apps, identifies suspicious activities;
4. Anti-Ransomware module - detect and block potential ransomware activity;
5. Anti-spam - block spammers via integration with local email client.

To protect user’s privacy Bitdefender Total Security contains next components:

1. Safepay - protected environment for payments;
2. VPN - 42 locations with free 200 MB daily;
3. Password manager - single master pass for all credentials;
4. Devices protection - check and manage access to microphone and webcam;
5. Parental advisor - location and activity tracking for family devices.

Also, some extra utilities:

1. Anti-theft - prevents data in case of device loss or theft by remote access to it via Bitdefender Central account;
2. OneClick Optimizer - deletes unnecessary files to free up disk space;
3. Data protection - data shredder for files.

So we decided to take a look at this security suite, then conduct and write Bitdefender Total Security 2019 review. It is based on Windows 10, 64-bit PC.

Specifications:

Installation & interface

Before downloading and installing Bitdefender, make sure your system requirements are met:

1. Windows 7/8/10, 2GB RAM, IE 11;
2. macOS Sierra (10.12) or above, 1GB space;
3. iOS 11.2 or higher;
4. Android 5.0 or higher;
5. Internet connection.

Note, that if there is another antivirus on your device, it will not coexist friendly with Bitdefender - you’d have to remove it totally. Also, you have to sign up and create a Bitdefender account to use the app. While doing that, you can choose a trial, which is 30 days of free use. Interface is quite convenient, the main left menu contains tabs like Dashboard, Protection, Utilities, etc.

Protection is the key tab, with all security tools inside: antivirus, web protection, firewall, antispam, safe files, anti-ransomware. In Privacy tab there’s also a special Bitdefender VPN, payments, webcam protection, parental control. Utilities include one-click optimizer, startup optimizer, disk cleanup, anti-theft. There are additional items as well: notifications, settings, support.

How to use Bitdefender, types of scans

The program does not require significant effort. In order to perform a quick scan (to check if there are any security threats), just open the Protection tab and click the Run Scan button. Users may install BTS on any other devices, managing it from a personal account online.

The Full System Scan feature is also located in the Protection > Antivirus tab. In other tabs users can choose a type of scan to perform, set the frequency (schedule), specify drives/folders/files, etc. So, nothing extraordinary as for security software. Quarantine, as you’ve guessed, holds harmful files and threats as detected by scanning.

In addition to basic tasks, there’s a bunch of useful options. For instance, Online Threat Prevention allows to avoid online fraud sites or phishing efforts, and also a user may set exceptions (URL, domain, IP) when 100% sure about legitimacy and safety.

Webcam protection and parental control gain more and more significance in our day and age. One great additional feature is Bitdefender VPN (Dashboard > Open VPN) included by default in the suite with automatic location selection.

Testing the performance

Now, from theory to practice, let’s test Bitdefender Total Security. Using Anti-Malware Testing Standards Organization (AMTSO) and European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research (EICAR) testing files, designed and certified specifically to test antivirus and security software, we ran several tests for Bitdefender.

First, we checked if Bitdefender would respond to manual downloading of a malicious file by EICAR. It did successfully: Web protection notified us about the dangerous page being blocked. Disk boot protection check found the threat as well.

Having complicated the task with ZIP, ZIPX, RAR, 7Z, JAR, TGZ files (archived malware) we also got positive detection by Bitdefender. The same went for potentially unwanted programs (PUA) test files.

The second stage was meant to be anti-phishing protection, though we were not able to carry it out, even after we had enabled this feature in settings.

So we moved on to the next task - testing real-time protection capabilities. For this we used special threat simulations by CheckMe service. Six threats were flagged by Bitdefender: malware infection, command and control communication, browser exploitation, data leak, anonymizer use and identity theft. Although note that these are not necessarily actual attacks, rather potentially vulnerable areas. Anyhow, BTS detected only 4.

For the main test of scanning capabilities, surely enough we ran both types of scan. Quick Scan lasted 3 minutes 40 seconds and found 1 threat. Full system scan took very long time (over 5 hours) while also slowing down the computer (Bitdefender launched 6 processes, with CPU load between 48 and 54 %), and resulted in 2 potential threats.

Technical support

To find answers to certain questions about Bitdefender, you may visit their consumer support page, with plenty of materials. If it does not help, contact the support via email, phone call, or live chat. In our case it took about 10 minutes for a reply by email, reassuring that the issue will be fixed soon.

Verdict

We can conclude that Bitdefender Total Security is a decent security software. It is capable of detecting viruses, worms, trojans, zero-day vulnerabilities, malware and spyware. And of course, it has its goods and bads, as any other product. For good, we should say it has a nice interface, a wide set of tools, is available for all major platforms and overall works well to protect user’s online activities.

On the other hand, it has issues with stability and proper work (some elements fail or act inaccurately) on old OS versions. It is also heavy PC resources consumption during a full scan, and requires removing any existing antivirus.