A² personal realtime protection...Good?

A² personal realtime protection...Good? is it a good complement to NOD32? Or it´s better using only KAV?

 

A-squared has a huge signature base -- nearly 180,000 -- and is steadily growing & being updated. Of course it is well said that you cannot measure effectiveness by the number of sigs -- and different outfits count sigs in different ways. Even so, A-squared's broad scope of malware protection seems quite impressive to me.

Also, the heuristics are said to be quite powerful.

I've been using A-squared for several months & my computer remains virginal. Am I just *lucky* or is my protection really that good? As the saying goes...

 

A2's realtime protection "power" is its IDS system - a behaviour blocker. It can detect lots of threats without an update (aswell a a huge number of false positives ).

The realtime protection given by A2 is far more powerful than its scanner.

 

Or most probably like most people here, you don't really need it. That said, if I'm going to be lured by all the promises of behavior based software , I would rather fall of A2 squared IDS than all those so called HIPS products.

 

Is A2 similar to Ewido in detecting Spyware/Malware and trojans?

 

ewido has teh bigger database but either one would compliment nod32 nicely.

 

Using A2 here.
I think it found one item from surfing, before I window washed.
hasn't done anything wrong..that I am aware of yet.

 

I didn't like it myself. I got more than a couple false positives. It was identifying stuff like Mirc and Limewire just because at some point in the past malware had been found in a package someone had. My stuff was clean though.

Another thing more in line with the realtime protection was that it tried to modify all my other security apps. I'd seen stuff fight over the winsock and other stuff jump first in line in the autostart registry and even knock other stuff/ competitors out. But from what I could tell it tried to modify every one of my actual executables. I didn't think this was necessary especially since it was a trial that I might and eventually uninstall. Because of this I never let it do its driver install thing either. The uninstall was buried instead of on a menu which made me more paranoid.

I was told it needed to be this way to do its job but since it set off all my personal hieuristics I never even gave this IDS a chance.

I give it a 2 out of 5

 

You didnt let it do its work then you give it a 2/5 rating? Of course it needs to modify an application, it's the way it "watches" applications actions.

 

spysweeper does the same thing, its nothing new and has been discussed before.

 

I like the preventing methods, because preventing is always better than curing. In other words preventing = smarter.

Any shield that protects me from being infected has priority #1 and I don't care what other people say, because you have to study a software in DETAIL to evaluate the shield and the scanner.
If I don't see any scientific proof in a post and nothing but guesses and opinions, it won't influence my opinion at all.

If you have A2 realtime, keep it and use it as long it doesn't conflict with other softwares.
Sometimes you have to experiment on your own with different shields.
What's the risk ? Surfing on the net is more risky than using several shields at the same time and even when you get infected by possible conflicts your scanners will find the malware. Just think in the right proportions.

If A2 realtime didn't find anything up to now, that doesn't prove anything, it only proves you were lucky until now.

 

Protecting you from being infected?

Antivirus/Antitrojans generally do that with their real time monitor, scanning files. Similar is whitelisting blacklisting activex controls, bad sites etc.

Hardening your browser/email etc does this too.

Execution launch monitor, could prevent infections, if you somehow could tell if it was infected through sorcery.

Most of the other stuff, generally alert you to stuff after you are infected.

When was the last time you saw a "scientific proof" ?

 

They have my email address as part of the trial and I wasn't logging packets or ports while I installed so I can't really respond honestly. This potential customer percieved very suspicous behavior that cost a sale though.

 

I don't even remember when or the date.
If I would listen to everybody, my computer would be full of security softwares.
I just listen to my own intuition and of course I like to participate in any discussion, but that is fun. I've seen these discussions so many times in forums and everybody is convinced to have the right answer.
My problem is which one do I have to believe ? The one with the highest title or the one with highest voice. In the army I listened to the one who shouted loudst.

 

I am a licensed user of all these three products,
and i am using the combination NOD32 and A2 personal on one pc
and Kaspersky on another.

They are very difficult to compare regarding how MUCH they find,
near my personal experience the last half year, i can't say that there
is that much difference.
KAV 6.x Beta is very promissing though ..

One thing that really is different is the speed and performance impact
on your system.
NOD32 with A2 is better regarding that.

Both A2 and Kaspersky are developing very fast, and change their program
(not only their malware definition database / sigs) fast.

So for me it is almost impossible to choose wich one of the 2 combinations to choose.

So, better buy licenses of all three, and make ICT-security /Windows-Anti Malware your hobby, like lot of others do..

If you had choosen any other combination the aswer for me was much easier to answer.