VIPRE Antivirus Premium, the Antivirus and Firewall Protection You Need for Windows

VIPRE Antivirus Premium 4.0 is designed to protect your computers in real-time against viruses, Trojans, spyware, rootkit, worms, adware and other types of malware. The program provides more than just a malware protection:

• E-mail Protection – VIPRE Antivirus Premium 4 and VIPRE Antivirus 4 will scan incoming and outgoing messages for harmful messages. It will scan every email attachments for malware and viruses.
• Two-way Firewall – Sunbelt Personal Firewall is now in VIPRE Antivirus Premium offering two-way and rule-based firewall protection. Simple and Learning modes is available to running the firewall so any type of user is accommodated. The firewall in VIPRE also offers Boot Time Protection that protects the computer before Windows has a chance to open.
• Web Filtering and Anti-Phishing Protection – block advertisements, phished or fraudulent websites, malicious URL filtering, script and ActiveX blocking and filter third-party, persistent or session cookies.
• Host Intrusion Prevention (HIPS) – prevents exploits and injection by another process or application to another program.
• Intrusion Detection System (IDS) – blocks exploits and prevents any attacks in your computer or network.
• Block Traffic – VIPRE provides handy command to immediately block all internet traffic in case of attack. This option is quite useful to people using more than 1 computer and seeing an attack on some computer but not on other PCs.
• Incremental Updates – VIPRE Antivirus Premium and VIPRE Antivirus is now updated many times a day with incremental updates to its detection signatures against malware.
• Task Scheduler – schedule a scan or manage how often VIPRE will check for risk definitions are one of the options in using VIPRE. There is a Power setting for VIPRE allowing the program to wake up the computer for scheduled scan.
• Scanning of USB upon insertion – this is a new option in using VIPRE in addition to scanning removable or external drives.
• Custom and On-demand Scanner – In addition to Active Protection, the real-time protection engine by VIPRE. An on-demand and custom scan is an option.
• System Tools – VIPRE also offers system tools to clean the computer’s history to prevent spyware in getting private data. PC Explorer is also available to manage and explore what’s on your computer.

VIPRE Antivirus Premium 4.0 was made available to add support to 64-bit edition of Windows 7, in addition to 32-bit edition of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, Server 2008, Server 2003 and Windows 2000 SP4. The install process of VIPRE continues to be straight-forward. The firewall and antivirus of VIPRE is fully integrated to Windows Security Center and Windows Action Center in Windows. It disables Windows Defender, if installed or enabled. VIPRE Antivirus Premium will only use 25.9MB of hard-disk space and require a PC restart after installation. A setup wizard is presented after the system restart to guide you in setting up VIPRE. The installer will not automatically detect what email client is installed but you have the option to select which email program is in use. After installation, the program will download the necessary risk definitions to start protecting the computer. Note that the Active Protection by VIPRE is disabled until the risk definitions has been downloaded and applied.

VIPRE Antivirus Premium boasts its low memory usage which is true. It only uses 40MB of RAM to run its protection and other components. There is no more browsing performance issue in VIPRE Antivirus ever since it was fixed earlier this month. The only issue that I found is the failure to retrieve newsgroup messages using Windows Mail in Vista, if the email protection for the said email client is enabled. This issue occurs with earlier version of VIPRE as well.

VIPRE will protect your computer against malware and to test that, I initiated a transfer of malware samples. VIPRE has detected 196 out of 205 malware executables and a perfect score on 66 compressed malware files. That’s 96 to 97% of protection by VIPRE.

An unlimited home site license of VIPRE Antivirus Premium costs $70 only. If you have single machine, you’ll only pay $40. Are you using Virtual Machine system? If so, you don’t need to pay for extra license.