On demand scanner for use with NOD32?

NOD32 has the best real time protection you can get according to the ICSA ratings (the only personal use softare certified for anti-spyware) but the on demand scanner is not ICSA certified. There is very little software for personal use that is ICSA certified, so they are joining a large club. Is there an antivirus software that I can install and use strictly for schedule and on demand scanning that won't conflict with NOD32 and that is ICSA certified on Windows XP Professional?
Norton Antivirus is certified. McAfee VirusScan Plus is not certified on XP (and it comes with an uncertified firewall to boot).

 

i guess its a personal choice because imo nod is def not the best real time. for me it has let through stuff and i got infected more than a few times. after switching to kaspersky i never saw a infection again unit today while trying norton 2009 it let a zlob through and let it download to the system. persoanly i like the dr web and kaspersky on demand for systems not running kaspersky already.

i would not base your desicion on who is and who is not certified personally

 

If the certifications were out of whack with other testing results, that would be something to note. But NOD32, Antivir, and McAffe come out tops in the Antivirus comparitives testing for real time protection. But there isn't any real time protection that is anywhere near adequate. There's no replacement for good on demand scanning. ICSA certifications are the creme de la creme of certifications. NOD32's on demand scanner looks good everywhere else you go.

 

DR Web or Bitdefender are very good options

 

I think you can use Avira free on demand, it shouldn't conflict with NOD.

 

drweb cureit of course,

1. Its FREE
2. Requires NO INSTALLATION
3. includes adware/spyware detections plus all the rest, no limitations!
4. includes 'full removal' of infected files
5. Only 11mb Download


quite simply, there is no better free on-demand scanner available.

 

I would recommend Bitdefender Free Edition
http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-ca--BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html

Its ICSA certified and can detect viruses,worms,trojans, spyware and rootkits.
Plus unlike DrWeb CureIT! and other on-demand scanners, it can auto-update itself. So you don't need to download a new version for new defs everytime.

 

yes, but it requires installation and running processes all the time to do this, which i doubt people would want from just a secondary on-demand scanner......

 

Between ICSA, Westcoastlabs, and AV-comparatives (limited number of products but brutal testing), there is no perfect security solution.

Sophos antivirus has all of the certifications in the world but AV-comparatives rates its real time protection a failure.

That being said, a combination of NOD32 and CA firewall comes closer to perfect than most. Notice how there is very little consumer software that Westcoastlabs certifies for anti-trojan or anti-malware. Anti-trojan is huge, that's how everyone playing WoW got infected.

An alternate idea - what does everyone think of Windows Live Onecare? It's got lots of certifications, but it isn't tested at AV-comparatives.

One reason I pay attention to certifications is that I've tried Agnitum Outpost, the darling of nearly every firewall shootout, a few times and I always find that it screws up some normal use of my computer, and that's at minimal settings.

 

What do you mean? You only trust ondemand scanning, not realtime?

The virus signatures is the same anyway, and in many cases the realtime scanner can detect more than the ondemand scanner, because of behavioral analysis that only works in realtime.

Of course the best thing to do is check out how your product works, because there are differences out there, and some product have more features enabled by default in ondemand mode, like advanced heuristics, sandbox etc. But as I said, check out how your AV works, and maybe you can tweak the settings to increase protection by enabling extra options.

 

But it's too cumbersome to use for everyday use. But if you only use it to clean a computer or do a full scan every now and then, it's probably fine.

What I'm talking about is:
- Sloooow startup
- No auto-update, so must re-dowload >10MB every time you want new signatures.
- No right-clicking on a file/folder
- Starts that annoying quickscan every time you just want to scan a single file/folder, making it even slower for everyday use.
- Doesn't even remember settings, so every time you start CureIT, you must selevt language, scan settings etc.
- Nags about buying full version of dr-web.
- Very slow scanning speed.

All in all, it could have been a good product, and it's free (as you mention), and virus cleaning abilities are good. But it's just too cumbersome to use compared to some other offers out there. More polishing please

 

two antivirus programs installed at once is a very bad idea.
why not have something like mbam or superantispyware as on demand?
both great with trojans,spyware rootkits etc.

 

its a secondary scanner, you use your primary installed AV for all of those.....

how many times are you planning on scanning your machine, especially with a secondary antivirus scanner?

.... geeeez!

slow scanning speed?.... quality of a scan always rules over speed.

 

+1

This is your best option.

 

The percentages for real time scanning at AV-Comparatives are quite low for all products. Sophus has the highest (72%) but achieves it with an extraordinary number of false positives. That's why it was rated a failure.

I've discovered Microsoft has a free on demand scanner that is run as an ActiveX control. I intend to run it once a week. It found a trojan in my temporary internet files that I cured with a disk cleanup. This looks like a good bet.

 

Ah, I see...

You probably misunderstood what AV-comparatives are testing. The lower scores you are referring to is the retrospective tests, right? And your're worried becacause they are lower than the on-demand tests? But this is not a test of the realtime-scanning. Instead, the retrospective comparsions deal with the AVs abilities to detect virus with outdated definitions, and is useful if you wanna know how well heuristics/emulation etc. works.

 

Yes, that clears things up a bit. But Sophus still has excessive false positives with the On Demand scanner.

 

I'm not saying YOU need a secondary scanner for everyday use, but there seems to be people in this forum who like to use some more security programs than the avarage john doe

And for more frequent use, I am telling you that Dr.Web Cure-IT is a bit cumbersome because it's not integrated in the system, and lacks auto-updates. Maybe some of the stuff will improve when v5 is released - and they ship an updated Cure-IT as well?

Regarding scan speed, I have to disagree with you. By default, Cure-IT is very slow at scanning, and it doesn't scan more "deep" than others - on the contrary, it actually excludes quite a lot of file types, like archives, by default. While many competing AVs does scan archives up to a certain point (there's always a limit on archive recursion, e.g. 3 or 5 levels)

 

I disagree, drweb scans much more regarding unpacking for sure, it scans shed loads more than say nod32 as an example (no dissing here), some say its not needed, but if it detects one more virus on an infected machine by this method, its worth it.

Drweb for-Sure, is underrated for the technology it possesses, on this forum it seems to be purely a detection rate review on sample sets of a million etc that have not been properly checked or confirmed to be active 'real' in-the-wild malware, drweb shouldn't receive negative comments for not playing this game, most of drweb's admirers actually use the software for this very reason, because their methods are whats best-for-the-customer, instead of best for the company.

could drweb be improved on detection, sure, all could! but is it poor, certainly not, just because they focus their limited-ish resources on malware 'they-believe' to be threats and to not add them all, does not limit the detection rate to its customers, only for these tests i mention.

if you didnt know, both Russians are unpacking monsters (as was once mentioned on here )and its not a surprise either, that its the Russians with great removal capabilities.

there have been many arguments about 'you cannot cure what you cant detect', but the same argument could be said for 'you cannot cure what you CAN detect', either way, the sample remains on the computer, the simple fact is, i fail to see what fast scanners really offer on todays market.

do people just want to use an AV that shows a green tick in the status screen, to say all is clean with 0 infections?

anyway, To get back onto on-demand,

cureit does not need archive scanning, its purely built to 'cure' an infected machine, archived malware is safe and useless.

if you would rather use a different scanner that doesnt offer the same 'quality' to cure a system, fair enough, there are plently of choices, but speed will never rule over quality.

will v5 improve detection, yes.
will v5 improve scanning speed, yes.

but, will it also scan more....... yes.

so i really wouldn't expect a much bigger jump in scanning speed, it brings it right back to quality over speed.

i dont wish to put a figure on it, but i'll try, lets say 10-30% faster in v5's engine, but with the extra files to scan, maybe a 10 minute or so shorter scan.

 

Well the last bit might get it locked if i pick on it so I won't.

But really,nothing is perfect. I tried disinfecting my dads comoputer with cureit, yet it corrupted and said lisence was invalid and update failed. ANd yet, spybot did the trick

 

what update, cureit does not update.

licence, what licence?

 

BTW, Sophus is an enterprise product.

Doing some more cross referencing, Bitdefender looks like the best choice when I updgrade to 64 bit Vista. It is not ICSA certified for Windows XP Pro.

-- I take it back. I'd go with Kaspersky Internet Security on Vista until such time as there is more information available on what works on Vista - of which there is very little feedback.

To be more clear, the shortcoming of NOD32 compared to the best competition is its virus cleaning ability which is not ICSA certified. Its virus detection ability is ICSA certified. What separates it from its competition is its spyware cleaning ability. NOD32 is better anti-spyware than dedicated anti-spyware software, which is going the way of dedicated anti-trojan software. But as Westcoast labs reveals, there still isn't much consumer software that is good against trojans.

 

I will second that. I lost all concerns when i first tried DrWeb. Simple and up to par IMO. Still Nod32 is my favorite but thats water under the bridge, what works and is stable and reliable cut across any critics blows about it.

EASTER

 

Microsoft OneCare has been tested by AV-comparatives since Feb. 2007
http://www.av-comparatives.org/index.html?http://www.av-comparatives.org/seiten/comparatives.html

 

Yes, you have to install, just like SAS Free. That doesn't hinder people from installing SAS. And the background updater can be disabled any time, no great rocket science (just like in SAS Free).
Its much more convenience IMO, than manual update every week like DrWeb CureIT and other on-demand scanners like it.