How Good Is The Protection Provided By Bitdefender?

I have recently signed up for a renewal of BD Total Security but was a little alarmed to see that recently published tests by security 'experts' are suggesting that Bitdefender's performance has significantly declined in recent months.

A report from Dennis Labs rated it very badly with a very low detection rate and worse than some free AV's. It was, by a huge margin, according to them, the worst of all the major security packages available.

The same company had previously rated it very highly so, if accurate, there seems to be a problem. Any thoughts?

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Rohugh

I cannot comment on the expertise and accuracy of the security 'experts', if you look at enough of them all the AVs are either excellent or useless, just as reading the home pages of AVs brings up all the problems. Bitdefender is an excellent security solution and nothing I have seen or found leads me to think otherwise - I have another years license waiting to be activated later this month.

Lionet

Any thoughts?

Hi SiSee,

+1 for Rohugh,

and keep in mind the best firewall is between the chair and the keyboard... whatever the software!

and the firewall is the protection before the AV.

Regards,

shpshftr@netzero.net

My thoughts:

Dennis Labs also rates Symantec/Norton AV the highest, that's all I need to know about Dennis Labs. Next to AVG Norton is one of the worst. I fix computers for people that get infected and AVG is #1 for detection failure with Norton in a close #2.

Bitdefender has been pretty good for the last several years though I am seeing bad signs with "Total Security" and with all the added features in BDPlus that you can't opt out of. It is really disappointing. I find BD works fine but I wouldn't suggest it without Malwarebytes running right next to it.

Rohugh

Running more than one active security program is not recommended by Bitdefender as the active scan engines can conflict and cause problems [i know there are a few here that will disagree with this and do run them together without seeing any conflicts] although MBAM on demand scans are a useful addition. Again, as I previously said, I have no doubts about Bitdefender (Total Security) despite there being a number of features that I don't use.

Oh, and let's not get into other AV software programs, Bitdefender admin get a bit twitchy about it.

shpshftr@netzero.net

Like I said, and thank you for confirming Rohugh, MBAM does run nicely with BD on demand and real time both, though it wasn't always the case. I've been using BD since 2009 and have watched it evolve. For me right now, it is better than anything else I've tried, but I am concerned they are spreading themselves a bit thin.

Oh, and Nanny Trolling in this forum is not necessary either. Bitdefender admin are perfectly capable of responding on their own. :blink:

Nesivos

I have recently signed up for a renewal of BD Total Security but was a little alarmed to see that recently published tests by security 'experts' are suggesting that Bitdefender's performance has significantly declined in recent months.

A report from Dennis Labs rated it very badly with a very low detection rate and worse than some free AV's. It was, by a huge margin, according to them, the worst of all the major security packages available.

The same company had previously rated it very highly so, if accurate, there seems to be a problem. Any thoughts?

I can tell you this. I use BDIS 2015 on my W7-SP1 computer and BD W8 Security on my Windows 8.1 computers. Once a month or so I run Kaspersky Virus Removal tool as a check and the only thing it has ever found were two false positives. I also use MBAM 2.03 Premium and the only thing it has ever found are a couple of PUPs during app installations. MBAM 2.03 in known to be super aggressive with respect to PUPs.

In fact I just ran Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool at its highest level of detection on of my computers just before I downloaded and installed this month's Windows updates. Everything came up clean.

So what does that prove? It depends what you think of Kaspersky and MBAM.

SiSee

Well, it is true that these are only results from one particular lab but I do find the sheer size of the failure in detection rate quite alarming, particularly as they had rated Bitdefender so highly in the past.

I have recently had a problem with a failed detection (an annoying browser hijack resetting homepage to 'blank page') on a pc using Bitdefender. Nortons did find and resolve the problem there.

On the other hand, I have had no problems on the several other machines that I manage and which all run Bitdefender (along with MBAM).

I guess we can only keep an eye out for further testing and see how it fares.