Prevx Running Without Internet Access

I can't find an explicit mention of this on the Prevx web site or in the FAQ here...

What exactly happens if a computer (say a laptop) running Prevx is used away from its Internet connection?

I'm getting the general sense that Prevx is specifically not intended for use on systems that spend a fair portion of the time in no-Internet-access standalone usage. Fair impression or am I missing something?

And generally speaking, would Prevx alone (not along with another anti-virus software) be a good low-impact security solution for a netbook running Windows XP?

 

Hello

Prevx will currently only protect against known threats and variants of threats that the PC had encountered. It will still continue to function properly and monitor system behavior, allowing you to recover from any infection in the off chance that something was to infect your PC while offline. We will soon be adding offline scanning into Prevx as well, simply for this case (when users are frequently offline) but any conventional AV would fall to the same limitations as Prevx would with a pure-offline functionality: an AV is only as good as its last update. Prevx inverts the model by scanning online always which allows us to catch brand new threats but as a supplement we think it is useful to support offline scanning as well.

We had originally planned to first introduce this in our Prevx 4.0 offering but we may be bringing it in earlier, as an update to Prevx 3.0 within the coming weeks.

It is generally designed to be used with an active internet connection, but it can be used safely provided you aren't installing large amounts of questionable software while offline, which is the only time that the PC would be at risk.

You can use Prevx by itself or with any other major security product - nothing is perfect, Prevx included, but if you want to run with a very light setup, Prevx alone works well in our opinion (Quick note: Prevx doesn't cover antifirewall/antispam areas so you "may" want to use an extra product for these if you feel they are of value to you).

Let me know if you have any other questions!

 

Ah, this is the key point on which I was not clear. It's for my wife's netbook and she never installs software while offline. In fact, the only things she generally installs while online are browser add-ins or extensions, updates to Acrobat and the like. And only that when needing an add-in to gain access to a certain document or content.

I just got the impression at one point in reading here (which I knew simply had to be mistaken) that Prevx would somehow disallow running routine (old) executables in the absence of Internet access.

Points taken regarding anti-spam (not really applicable in this case as she "benefits" from ridiculously strong server-side protection) and firewall needs. Thanks! Sounds like I do have an alternative to making that computer one of our "three" Norton systems.