When you buy antivirus protection these days, you know that it's really antivirus plus protection against Trojans, rootkits, rogues, and all sorts of malware. Sometimes, though, you get even more. The "Plus" in Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 ($39.95 per year; $59.95 for three licenses) refers to an impressive collection of bonus features that many vendors would reserve for their full security suite.
The user interface for Bitdefender's antivirus is exactly the same as that of the full security suite, so you can see just what you'd get by upgrading. Suite-only features are simply grayed out and disabled. By default, Bitdefender runs in Autopilot mode, meaning it takes care of any security concerns without any user intervention. Just so you don't forget it's protecting you, it displays a weekly report listing all the good deeds it has done.
Excellent Lab Results
Almost all of the independent labs that I follow include Bitdefender in their testing. Bitdefender doesn't bother with the simple certifications offered by ICSA Labs and West Coast Labs, but it received VB100 certification in all 12 of the last 12 tests by Virus Bulletin. As for the remaining labs, those that perform hands-on, real-world testing, Bitdefender is right there in the mix.
Austrian lab AV-Comparatives puts antivirus technologies through a variety of tests including static tests, dynamic tests, and performance tests. Like Kaspersky, Bitdefender earned an Advanced+ rating (the highest rating) in all of these tests. AV-Test Institute gave it a near perfect score of 17.5 points in tests on protection, performance, and usability. Only Kaspersky has done better, with 18 of 18 possible points.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 Lab Tests Chart
London-based Dennis Technology Labs uses a testing system that replays malicious Internet traffic, making it possible to test multiple products with exactly the same malware interaction. The complexity of this system means they can't test as many products as other labs, but both Kaspersky and Bitdefender are included.
In the latest results from Dennis Labs, ESET, Norton, and Kaspersky rated AAA, the top rating. Bitdefender came very close, earning an AA rating.
See How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.
Malicious URL Blocking
Thanks to a real-time feed supplied by MRG-Effitas, I have access to a continually updated list of malicious URLs. I use these to check how each antivirus product handles extremely new threats. Does it block access to the URL, wipe out the downloaded malware, or just sit there doing nothing?
Bitdefender completely blocked access to 18 percent of the live malicious URLs I used for testing, but didn't wipe out any of the downloads that got through. It might well have caught those on launch, but that's not what this test measures. I've run two dozen products through this test so far, each with URLs no more than four hours old. The average protection rate is 33 percent, almost twice what Bitdefender managed. I'll be interested to see how Norton AntiVirus (2014)£24.99 at NortonLifeLock and Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus (2014)£22.49 at Webroot UK do when it's their turn for this test.
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2015 Malware Blocking Chart
Good Malware Blocking
I rely more and more on the independent labs for in-depth antivirus testing, but I always need to do my own hands-on testing, to get a feel for the product's protection. To start, I opened a folder containing my just-gathered new set of malware samples. Bitdefender quickly and quietly wiped out 83 percent of those samples.
Next I launched the remaining samples and noted the antivirus's reaction. It completely missed several, ending up with an overall detection rate of 86 percent and an overall score of 8.4 points. Kaspersky, the only other product tested with this exact same sample collection, earned 7.9 points.
You'll notice in the chart below that many products earned a better score than Bitdefender when tested with my previous collection of malware samples. Because that was a different collection, the results aren't apples-to-apples. And when my results don't entirely jibe with results from the big labs, I tend to believe the labs.