Question on Companies & Products

[Barkley]

I'm new to this forum. *I have been helping a few people with virus problems and started getting the questions. *What is the difference between these companies and their products.

Command Software
Central Command
Kaspersky Labs

Thanks

Hi,

Command Software makes Command Antivirus -- a good one; it's pretty consistently near the top in tests.

Kaspersky makes what originally was called AVP -- AntiViral Toolkit Pro. Now it's generally called KAV -- Kaspersky Antivirus. See my post in another thread below, though, before considering it.

Central Command used to be the main U.S. reseller of AVP until a few years ago. Their web address was www.avp.com . They then switched to selling AVX (in my opinion and in tests, an inferior product). However, they marketed AVX on their site as an apparent "upgrade" for AVP rather than an entirely different brand -- at least that's the impression that was conveyed. Virtually everyone in security circles who became aware of this apparent deception crossed Central Command and AVX off their list as potential resources. And I agree. They also kept the domain name, avp.com, meaning that people looking for AVP would come to their new AVX site by mistake and get sucked in. This confusion along with the complaints generated by Central Command hanging onto the domain name and having the confusing/deceptive explanation on their site caused Kaspersky to change the name of their AV to KAV. It appears that www.avp.com has now been sold or otherwise transferred to another company or usage.

Careful

Note that AVX is now becoming BitDefender. Maybe the AVX name caught too much flak.

Careful

[root]

Thanks for that info Careful. I was not aware that bitdefender was AVX. Lame.
As for Kaspersky, I personally believe it is a very powerful AV/AT. But, I have become very discouraged with the fact that it has become very bloated and tends to slow my machine down to a crawl, especially when checking zips.
Talking about the Companies involved, you have one product KAV which used to be AVP but when sold by KAV Russia you get KAV 4.0, and when sold by the Scandanavian service, it is KAV 3.6. Version 3.6 is the same engine, but is more stable and runs faster than 4.0.
Command also produced F-Prot AV.
F-Secure uses three AV engines, F-Prot, AVP, and Orion.
In helping others with virus problems, you do not want to leave out NOD32 by Esset. It is resonably priced, and probably has the best virus detection rate of any of the AVs. Little weak on trojans, but they are working on that all the time, and it is improving, I believe.
Hope I didn't muck things up here. *

[Scratchy]

Hi All,

I could be wrong but I believe F-Prot is developed by Frisk * *
software in Iceland, and the F-Prot scan engine is licensed to Command and
F-Secure by Frisk.

Best regards,
Scratchy

F-Prot website: * *http://www.complex.is

[Barkley]

Thanks for all your feedback, I have been running into some interesting practices by Central Command. *As for the last comment on F-Secure and Command Software (which was amazingly at their peak in 92 when central Command started up with their name) *Both are based on the F-prot engine from Frisk but have then taken different appraoches to the development of their products. *I personally think Command is the better product, especially for in the wild. *I think Command's problem is their inability to present their product to the market well and it is not "sexy" looking. *Just my opinion.

[Technodrome]

Command Antivirus product is very good product. I definitely agree with that. I like its simplicity and look. In the AV market last what you should look into is cosmetic look.

Command Antivirus was one of anti-virus product to detect Melissa as an unknown virus when it first appeared (I guess NOD32 was another one). This points out that Command AV has great heuristic capabilities

Overall: Command Antivirus offers truly powerful antivirus protection for the Windows OS environment.

Technodrome