ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 Business Edition

[TechyGuy]

The new version of Eset NOD32 Antivirus finally arrived in version 4. The version we tested, namely the Business Edition, includes an antivirus, antispyware, antirootkit and the new version of the management console that enables monitoring and manage an entire fleet from a single or several computers (application dedicated to the business world).

Using advanced ThreatSense technology, ESET NOD32 Antivirus proactively protects you from new attacks, even during the critical first hours when other vendors' products aren't aware the attack even exists. ESET NOD32 Antivirus detects and disables both known and unknown viruses, trojans, worms, adware, spyware, rootkits and other Internet threats.

ESET NOD32 Antivirus is also one of the fastest antivirus solutions, so fast you won't even notice it running. And it's both incredibly easy to use yet simple to tailor for your specific needs.

[TechyGuy]

Features

• Protection from the Unknown — Award-winning ThreatSense technology uses multiple layers of threat detection to deliver the most effective protection possible against new attacks. And ThreatSense is smart; it raises far fewer annoying "false alarms" than any other products that use heuristics.
  
• Finds Malware Other AV Companies Missed — Typically when a new copy of ESET NOD32 replaces another antivirus product on a home computer the average user finds viruses or malware resident on the machine that were undetected by their previous antivirus product.
  
• Built for Speed — ESET NOD32 Antivirus is lightning fast, so fast you won't even notice it's there. Even disk-intensive operations like performing a "full disk scan" to run smoothly in the background while you work or play.
  
• Easy on Your System — ESET NOD32 Antivirus is "lean and mean," typically using just 44 MB of memory, a fraction of what other products consume. Because it's fast and "light," upgrading your existing antivirus protection to ESET NOD32 Antivirus can literally be like buying a new computer. And the new automatic energy-sipping battery mode lets you work or play longer.
  
• Easy on You — ESET NOD32 Antivirus is easier to use than ever before. From its compact and intuitive user interface to its minimal use of alerts, you'll be up and running in a snap.You will receive the best possible proactive detection against malware, without enduring excessive system slowdowns and alerts, reboots or annoying false alarms.
  
• Smarter Scanner — Threats don't always enter your network in ways you expect. ESET NOD32 Antivirus inspects SSL-encrypted communication channels like HTTPS and POP3S and intelligently scans compressed files to find hidden threats other products miss. Proactive protection begins at the earliest point in system startup to ensure your computer is always secure.
  
• Clean and Safe Email — Email scanning for Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail, Windows Mail, and other POP3/IMAP mail clients, ensuring your email is free of viruses and other threats.
  
• Removable Media Security — Threats can enter your PC from removable media such as USB thumb drives. For self-running media, ESET NOD32 Antivirus scans autorun.inf and associated files when the medium is inserted, in addition to scanning any file on any removable device when it is accessed, or during a full-scan of the media. Power users can adjust ESET NOD32 Antivirus to perform additional levels of scanning on removable media.
  
• System Tools — ESET SysInspector and ESET SysRescue simplify diagnosing and cleaning of infected systems by allowing deep scans of system processes to find hidden threats, and creating bootable rescue CD/DVD or USB drives to help you repair an infected computer.
  
• Self Defense — ESET NOD32 Antivirus has built-in technology to prevent malicious software from corrupting or disabling it, so you can rest assured your system is always protected.

[TechyGuy]

ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4: a new user interface

Standard mode and Advanced mode

The interface has been redesigned and is both refined and complete. It is available in "Standard" mode and "Advanced" mode. In Standard mode, the user quickly knows the state of protection; so it can launch a virus scan, do a manual update, know precisely the version of the database of virus signatures, or even temporarily disable protection against viruses and spyware.

Protection Details

In Advanced mode, the administrator has enhanced menus and an additional menu called "Tools". The "State protection" menu not only indicates whether the services are in progress or not, but you can also access the whole of the file system and network activity, statistics antivirus, antispyware, real-time protection, protection of the mail client and protecting Web access in the form of explicit graphics.

More Options for Administrators

In general, all entries are expanded. Thus the virus scan in addition to being "smart" or "custom" can be configured in detail. In the configuration, the administrator can start or stop all the services (protection for Web access, antispam, protection of documents.). The toolbox is a catch-all (log file, Quarantine, Planner, SysInspector, SysRescue.) utilities that will be needed quickly to use.

F5 button is the heart of NOD32

In addition to the menus that appear on the top right corner of the window of the security suite (User Interface, Configuration, Tools, Help) you still have access to ultra-advanced menu via the "F5" function key on the keyboard. This is the heart of NOD32 Antivirus, which allows you to configure your liking. For example, by going to the User Interface you can reduce the application by disabling the GUI, choose whether to display alerts, notifications and tooltips, protect settings by password allow remote administration, use a proxy server.

Usability Improvements

For administrators, version 4 offers:

• License Manager with simplified tools to manage multiple licenses with different terms
• Read-only access for Management Console which enables multiple administrators to share tasks without risk of overwriting configurations
• Notification Manager to keep administrators informed of all key events with customizable alerts
• Full support of Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) compliance initiatives
• More efficient use of network bandwidth and improved log storage scalability
• Advanced Protection status screen that informs you of threat detections
• Password protection that prevents ESET NOD32 Antivirus from being uninstalled by unauthorized employees or visitors

[TechyGuy]

Antivirus and Antispyware

Proactive protection and rapid speed of analysis in Standard mode

In Standard mode, antivirus and antispyware are always activated and functional in the background for occupying 35 to 40 MB RAM. It is of course possible to launch an intelligent or custom scan. It will quickly first look at local disks and files that are mainly executable. The second allows you to choose the profile scan (depth, contextual, intelligent) that affect the time of the task in the background. A scan of the memory, local disks, removable media and even network drives!

ThreatSense type analysis

In advanced mode, the administrator can define the units to scan and configure the ThreatSense engine. For the attacks, among other objects (memory, boot sector, archives), you can enable multiple methods of analysis (signatures, heuristics, advanced heuristics, spyware, potentially unwanted applications, dangerous ...), choose the level of cleaning (none, basic and strict).

Setting protection for convenience

In the Detailed Configuration (F5 key), a lot of other parameters are available for antivirus and antispyware. You do not have to switch all services. Thus, it is possible to disable the protection against viruses and spyware while the self-defense is active. This function prevents malicious stop Eset Smart Security. You can also start Anti-Stealth against rootkits. The real-time protection is also very flexible to configure.

Screening protocols

Both modules are carried out on all types of files (for example executable, compressed executable, self-extracting archives, and can be used to block removable media when inserted), filters email client (POP3), access to Web (http, https). It is possible to exclude some files considered harmful and sometimes are not in the analysis via the Exclusions panel.

[TechyGuy]

Eset NOD Antivirus 4: Two cases for analysis in practice

Eset NOD32 Antivirus 4 is fully multitasking. Thus, in the Business Edition 64-bit that we tested under Windows Vista 64, it was quite possible to run multiple instances simultaneously without deteriorating system performance. For example, on a file server, another on a local workstation and one on a shared network folder.

Intelligent Analysis

The intelligent analysis at the request goes straight to the essential files that does the most sensitive of all internal units. This method is both reassuring and effective. It will give you a quick idea about the system state. The names of the file (like McAfee does) being analyzed are distinctly displayed. The administrator can also view the same information in a standalone window, for readability.

RAM Usage: Not more than 7 MB

As it can be seen with Windows Task Manager, this analysis do not occupy more than 7 MB of RAM. Which allows you to continue your work in parallel without significant slowdowns. Here, is the place where Norton lacks. You cannot work in parallel when Symantec scans your system. At the end of the operation, the report in the form of a newspaper is available in Tools, and then logs in the analysis section of the computer on demand.

Personalized Analysis

This is the one you choose for more specific requests in preferred mode. This is to specify in each case the elements to be analyzed. This could be the RAM, the internal units or external machines or network shared folders.

RAM Usage: Not more than 10 MB

Like the intelligent analysis, the personalized analysis benefits from improvements of the engine of NOD32, lighter and faster! Here, an analysis does not exceed the 10 MB of RAM occupation. This represents very little for a workstation with 1 to 4 GB of RAM!

Profile analysis

For recurrent analysis and in order to avoid systematically select the devices to scan and other criteria, you can use via configuration analysis, antivirus and antispyware, computer analysis of the demand, the Profile Manager. The latter contains the intelligent, thorough, and menu. By clicking the Profiles button you add your own and their characteristics (analysis of archives, media type, level of cleaning).

[TechyGuy]

Monitoring tools

Newspapers

This little red box does not contain elements. The newspapers can learn more about the activity (detected threats, events, analysis of the computer on request).

Quarantine and Planner

The Quarantine tab contains threats that are detected on your computer until now. If nothing appears, no infected object has been identified yet on your machine! The planner contains the recurring tasks that Eset NOD32 performs. It may be the automatic update regularly, checking files logon or after updating the basic signatures. You can also add your tasks: analysis of the computer to the application, run an external application, create a snapshot of the status of the computer.

SysRescue

To access SysRecue, go to "Tools" and select "Creating a rescue CD". This media "autoboot" will allow you to scan the system before Windows starts. It may well be on an optical (CD or DVD) on a removable device (USB flash drive, memory card). SysRescue works so that you must install the "Windows Automatic Installation Kit" (AIK) available at Microsoft Download Center.

SysInspector

It is also in the "Tools" menu. SysInspector does the in-depth analysis and takes a snapshot of the system. This requires the creation of a task. Then all the running processes, network connections, drivers, services, information system, the details of DLL or EXE files are available to you. It is a true dashboard for monitoring and restricted to the advanced user. The filtering is set in six levels of risk to good.

[TechyGuy]

Conclusion

Antivirus and antispyware are fighting side by side against the many threats that are arising now-a-days. The proactive antivirus engine of ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 is lighter in memory than the previous version and there are even tests that are smarter or personalized which are faster compared to the previous version. It provides a complete protection for Web access (HTTP, HTTPS), protection of mail clients Outlook, Outlook Express/Windows Mail, Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail (POP3), SSL filtering etc.

In addition to internal drives, all removable media (such as USB flash drive, external hard disk, memory card) as well as network shared folders can be analyzed. The inclusion of external media can be fully controlled. It prevents some malware that are likely made to disable the security feature of NOD32. Indeed, these are often done through the rootkits that spoils the security.

The new version of the console remote administration of the Business Edition version allows the deployment and management of clients on the network without complication. The distribution of security policies can be automatic and based on different criteria.

Advantages

• Ability to detect new attacks with proactive ThreatSense engine
• Analysis fast and greedy resource
• Very intuitive user interface
• Remote administration
• SysRescue and SysInspector

Disadvantages

• SysRescue requires Windows AIK (which is more than 1GB)