emmodeme harlyne letycya
Ben Hollinbeck
ESET Antivirus is suitable for cybersecurity-aware individuals and businesses looking for antivirus software that meets their needs and allows customization. This antivirus software earned solid scores during AV testing and offers several individual and business plans. However, preparing this ESET Antivirus review exposed us to its limitations. For instance, while ESET offers several cybersecurity features, its major antivirus plan, ESET NOD32, lacks the basic antivirus functionalities that its competitors provide their users.
ESET is one of the best antivirus software providers, offering various security features through its different plans. ESET Antivirus pricing starts at $39.99 per year for one device for the first year and allows you to add more devices for a fee. Businesses can also jump on any of its business plans, which cost as low as $211 per year for five devices.
This antivirus software offers excellent diagnostic and anti-phishing tools and more security features to protect you against cyber attacks and provide web and email protection. Popular features of ESET Antivirus include:
Apart from how well ESET Antivirus protects your devices from cybersecurity attacks and threats, this antivirus software allows you to customize its security features. It also packs helpful cybersecurity features, such as webcam protection and device control. The most common features that set ESET apart from its competition are:
ESET allows you to manage device connections and activities with specific rules for specific devices. For example, as a network administrator, you can prevent access to insecure content from your devices. You can also prevent authorized device connection to specific ports or restrict access privileges. ESET users can also prevent data duplication, such as transferring private business data onto external devices.
ESET has excellent antivirus functionality and provides plenty of customizable cybersecurity features. ESET Antivirus performed well in our independent testing, obtaining solid scores from AV-TEST and getting the top position amongst AV-Comparatives. It was one of the two antivirus providers with zero false positives.
ESET technologies eliminate existing threats and prevent all types of threats from infiltrating your networks or devices. ESET Antivirus software scans the websites you browse and checks your incoming emails to ensure no suspicious email attachment or link gets through. It blocks websites with malicious content, and its anti-phishing functionality detects and blocks phishing sites. An antispam feature also keeps unwanted emails out of your inbox.
ESET gives users an additional layer of protection via its firewall feature that controls incoming and outgoing network traffic. We love that this antivirus software enables customization of its firewall settings for your public, home or work profiles. You can filter content, allowing or blocking connection with selected websites, applications, services or port numbers. You can also specify what ESET should do with specific IP addresses or domain names. The software will also alert you of any unauthorized network activity.
ESET uses a 256-bit advanced encryption standard to store and organize your passwords, so you can automatically fill them in forms and protect them from hackers. You can also integrate with Google Authenticator to initiate two-factor authentication (2FA) and improve your password security. To further protect your passwords, ESET will send you security alerts whenever your passwords are at risk.
While both antivirus software products provide additional security features, Trend Micro offers a broader range, including identity theft and smart home protection. However, ESET NOD32, for essential security, supports connection with macOS and Windows devices. For Trend Micro, its basic plan only supports Windows computers. You can add other devices at an extra cost.
ESET Antivirus runs several processes to keep users safe from infiltration, such as idle-state scanning, which performs scans on devices even when users are not using them (so it can detect potentially damaging inactive threats). The advanced memory scanner can also detect hidden threats with multiple layers of encryption.
ESET's malware detection is nearly as good as the best antivirus programs offered by Norton, Kaspersky or Bitdefender. It can stop the latest ransomware, phishing attempts and spyware, but goes a step further with webcam protection, browser security extensions and an innovative scanner that looks for threats hiding in the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) repository.
The miser inside all of us will love the ability to buy ESET antivirus licenses one device at a time so you won't have to pay for unused capacity. That said, there's no unlimited-device plan to help users with many devices save money. ESET software also lacks some features now commonplace in antivirus software, such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service, a file shredder and apps for iPhones and iPads.
ESET offers a 30-day free trial to check out any of its three Windows antivirus programs. The company is unique in that it allows you to buy exactly the number of device licenses you need rather than being stuck with three, five or 10 licenses at a time. On the other hand, this pricing scheme can get expensive if you have a lot of computers at home, because ESET lacks an unlimited-device plan.
ESET's NOD32 Antivirus is for Windows systems only, while there are separate NOD32 Antivirus for Linux Desktop and Cyber Security for Macs programs. NOD32 Antivirus costs $40 per year for a single PC and $10 for each additional PC up to five in total.
It provides basic defenses against phishing, ransomware and script-based exploits and has a gamer mode, adware blocking, protection against phishing and spyware and defends the computer's UEFI start-up sequence. New additions include scanners for the Windows Registry and the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) repository.
ESET Internet Security adds hardened browser extensions for banking and shopping online, parental controls, webcam protection and a two-way firewall. It bundles in antivirus software for Macs, Android devices and Linux computers. ESET Internet Security costs $50 per year for one device, $60 for two, $90 for five and $140 for 10 systems.
At the top is ESET's Smart Security Premium, which sells for $60 per year for one computer, $70 for two, $100 for five and $150 for 10. It adds a password manager and AES-256 file encryption, but there's no file shredder or VPN access. This puts it at a disadvantage compared to the likes of Bitdefender and Kaspersky, which charge less but provide a fuller set of security and privacy features.
In addition to conventional comparisons of suspect files to a database of known threats, ESET's malware engine continually monitors the behavior of key system activities for the signs of an infection.
New potential threats are uploaded to the company's Live Grid cloud lab where machine learning techniques dissect the software. ESET distributes new malware signatures and other updates to its 110 million users as needed.
All three ESET security suites have dedicated anti-phishing defenses, block script-based attacks and protect the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) start-up code. The improved Ransomware Shield uses heuristic monitoring to uncover threats, such as unwanted programs hidden in the system Registry.
ESET is one of the first security programs to look for threats within the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) repository, which stores the system's metadata and definitions that the operating system and apps use to function.
None of ESET's programs have a quick-scan option to examine files likely to become infected. On the other hand, its full scans are so fast and efficient that after a couple of passes, they are almost as fast.
Should your computer become overwhelmed by malware, the company's downloadable SysRescue Live software can help; the ESET programs include a link to it. After installing the software on an external drive, flash key or optical disc and starting the system with it, the computer is scanned and cleaned in a secure Linux environment.
ESET's malware scanner offers very good protection against all sorts of threats. Combined with ESET's fast scans and low system impact, this makes it among the most efficient antivirus programs in the business.
Results from the German AV-TEST lab in November and December 2020 showed that the ESET scanner detected 100% of both known, widespread malware and brand-new "zero-day" threats. It registered no erroneous false positives during the test period.
ESET did nearly as well in the September-October round of tests, again catching all malware while registering two false positives. Both sets of evaluations improved on ESET's scores in some earlier 2020 rounds, in which ESET failed to catch all zero-day malware.
Most of the other paid antivirus products we review also had perfect AV-TEST scores in recent tests. That wasn't the case with Austrian lab AV-Comparatives, whose tests make it hard to get a perfect score without racking up lots of false positives.
In four rounds from July to October 2020, ESET blocked an average of 99.3% of "real-world" online malware, a mix of widespread and zero-day threats. Trend Micro led the group with 100% detection, but at a cost of 63 false positives compared to ESET's one.
London-based SE Labs goes a step further and examines how antivirus products handle malware after it's been detected. ESET slipped a bit here in the lab's July-September test run, letting one piece of malware infect the machine despite it being detected and coming out with a 97% protection score.
All three of ESET's antivirus programs can block phishing attempts, dangerous scripts and ransomware. It scans the UEFI boot-up sector, the Windows Management Instrumentation interface and the Windows Registry looking for problems.
ESET's Host-based Intrusion Protection, which acts like an early-warning tripwire, has been made more sensitive for 2021. The protection now offers the choice of several modes, including a self-learning option that improves over time. However, ESET's Social Media Scanner has been discontinued.
c01484d022