Security for everyone - Review Emsisoft Anti-Malware

Emsisoft is an IT company based in New Zealand which develops security products that are said to be highly effective in protecting from malware, while at the same time keeping a low profile regarding system resources. The company also brags about its security products as being bloat-free, which does sound appealing. Their antivirus for Windows is called Emsisoft Anti-Malware. We have used and tested it for a couple of days, and now we would like to share with you everything we liked and did not like about it. If you are curious about Emsisoft Anti-Malware, read our review, and you will know if this is the right product for you:

Pros and cons

Emsisoft Anti-Malware has some good things about it:

• Its antivirus engine is great at detecting and removing malware from your computer
• The user interface looks good, and it is easy to use on any device, including on devices with touch
• Emsisoft Anti-Malware has almost no negative effect on your computer's performance

Unfortunately, there are also a few things that are not that good about it:

• Emsisoft Anti-Malware does not disable Windows Defender, and that can lead to conflicts and performance issues
• The web shield is not that efficient, and it lets you visit dangerous websites
• The antivirus does not have a proactive approach when it comes to removable drives
• There is no firewall module included, so you have to make do with the built-in Windows Firewall
• There are no additional tools included

Verdict

Emsisoft Anti-Malware is a security product that is more than capable of protecting you against offline threats. You get a highly efficient antivirus engine that is nicely packaged in a good looking and easy to use user interface that you will probably like. However, before making a purchasing choice, you should also take into consideration that its web shield is rather weak and cannot protect you against dangerous phishing websites, there is no firewall module included and you must be careful to scan and clean all removable drives manually. Emsisoft Anti-Malware does not include any extra tools, such as parental controls or a VPN service. This "bloat-free" approach can attract some users, but it can also keep others at a distance. From our point of view, Emsisoft Anti-Malware is a security product that you should consider buying and using only if you want simple, basic anti-malware software.

The download and installation experience

The first thing you must do to install Emsisoft Anti-Malware on your computer is to go to the company's website and download the installer. It is worth noting that Emsisoft does not ask you for any personal information before letting you download their trial version. The file you download is called EmsisoftAntiMalwareWebSetup.exe and has a size of only 2 MB. Once you launch it, the installer downloads the files needed to install the security suite and then installs it on your computer. You cannot customize the installation in any way. When the download is finished, the security suite asks you to accept the license agreement. The second and final thing the installation asks of you is to tell it whether you want to test the product or if you want to use a license key you own. It is nice to see that Emsisoft does not ask for any personal information if you want to use the trial version. Then, you can see the user interface of Emsisoft Anti-Malware, which also starts an automatic update process for virus definitions. It is a good thing because it means you get up to date anti-malware protection right from the start. Downloading and installing Emsisoft Anti-Malware is swift: the whole process is quick and easy to go through. Also, you do not have to provide any personal information, and that is great.

Integration with Windows, web browsers, and universal Windows platform apps

During its installation, Emsisoft Anti-Malware does not disable Windows Defender and Windows Firewall. Leaving Windows Firewall on is a good idea because Emsisoft Anti-Malware does not offer a firewall module of its own. However, leaving Windows Defender enabled is not a good thing because it can lead to conflicts and performance issues. It is never good to have two antivirus products running simultaneously, so we consider this a negative aspect of Emsisoft Anti-Malware. Emsisoft Anti-Malware is well integrated with Windows 10 networking, and the lack of a proprietary firewall module is probably the reason for that. We had no issues when creating or joining a homegroup in the local network, when sharing files or when we used universal Windows platform apps. When it comes to your online security, Emsisoft Anti-Malware chooses to protect you by scanning and filtering all the internet traffic that goes on your computer. It does not bundle any additional web browser extensions, and that is a good thing. Once we had the security suite up and running, we did a couple of measurements to see how many system resources it needs to run and whether it slowed down our test computer. The first thing we measured was the average boot time of our computer. The good news is that it stayed the same after installing Emsisoft Anti-Malware. Then, we looked at how much RAM it consumes. This time, we were in for a surprise - Emsisoft Anti-Malware needs over 105 MB of RAM to keep all its processes running. That is a rather small number, by today's standards. We also checked whether Emsisoft Anti-Malware protects its processes from unwanted termination. We found out that it does, but we also found that trying to end them makes your computer unresponsive. When we tried to stop the primary Emsisoft process using Task Manager, it did not end, but our computer became unusable, as its processor stayed at full load. After a few minutes, we had no choice but to force reboot it. To check whether the internet or local network speeds are affected by Emsisoft Anti-Malware, we also ran a few tests with Speedtest.net and with LAN Speed Test. The speeds were the same before and after installing this security software, which means that it has no adverse effect on the internet or local network data transfers. Emsisoft Anti-Malware is well integrated with Windows and its networking features, probably because it has no firewall of its own. We also like the fact that this anti-malware product does not slow down your PC or the network speed. However, we count as a negative the fact that it makes your computer unresponsive when an unauthorized someone or something tries to end its protection processes.

Ease of use & configuration

The user interface you get from Emsisoft Anti-Malware looks good. For starters, it is a resizable window, and that is something that you do not often see these days. In it, there are only a few different sections for Protection, Scan, Quarantine, Logs, and Settings. Also, you get a series of different buttons and links that give you access to the essential tools and tasks. As you can see in the image below, Emsisoft Anti-Malware uses smooth and warm colors when things are OK, and bright orange or red colors when something requires your attention. Thanks to its generously sized elements, the user interface is easy to use on devices with touch screens too. Fortunately, that also applies to the most advanced settings available. If you browse through these settings, you will find that many are controlled by simple checkmarks that enable or disable them, and which can also be easily tapped with your fingers. Although most options and settings are easy to understand and do not require special technical knowledge, if you need help with anything. Emsisoft Anti-Malware provides you with access to local help files which work even when you are offline. You also get access to online documentation, frequently asked questions, and community forums. You can contact the company via email for further support but, unfortunately, because they are a team of people scattered all over the world, Emsisoft does not and probably could not offer chat or phone support of any kind. Emsisoft Anti-Malware includes detailed logs about every security event that took place on your computer. The logs are nicely organized and divided into different categories. However, there are no simple and visually attractive statistics offered, such as pie charts, graphs or something similar. Emsisoft Anti-Malware tends to display more alerts and notifications than other security products do. During the time in which we used this software, we saw alerts about malware threats, phishing websites being blocked, but also notifications about updates being installed or news published by Emsisoft on their website. The user interface offered by Emsisoft Anti-Malware looks good and is easy to understand and use. All the features, options, and settings are clear and concise and are readily available. However, some users might not appreciate the absence of visual statistics or phone support options. On the next page of this review, you can see how capable Emsisoft Anti-Malware is to protect your computer from malware and dangerous sites. You can also check our recommendations for what settings you might want to adjust.

Antivirus and antispyware protection

We started the antivirus and antispyware tests by checking whether Emsisoft Anti-Malware can protect you when surfing the internet in your favorite web browser. This security product chooses to protect you by filtering all the network traffic that goes through your PC. We used the most popular web browsers today - Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Opera - to try to load some bad websites. Unfortunately, Emsisoft Anti-Malware did not manage to block our access to those dangerous websites. We were able to visit most of the phishing websites we tried to load. In many cases, the Windows Defender SmartScreen did a much better job at warning us about the dangers lying ahead. Then, we wanted to see what Emsisoft Anti-Malware does when dealing with a removable drive containing malware files. We copied several malware samples on a USB memory stick, which we then plugged into our test computer. Emsisoft Anti-Malware displayed a notification telling us that we do not have to do anything because it "protects external storage devices automatically." So we did nothing and just waited out for a while. However, as nothing seemed to happen, and because nothing new was written in the logs either, we decided to open the USB memory stick in File Explorer. Emsisoft Anti-Malware was still quiet, even if we were looking at the infected files. So we tried to run one of the viruses on the memory stick. Only then did Emsisoft react and stopped us from running the malware. Emsisoft did not trigger an antivirus scan for the entire memory stick, and viruses were still there, so we felt compelled to run a manual antivirus scan ourselves. Only when it was ended could we be sure that the stick was clean. Unfortunately, the way Emsisoft deals with removable drives is far from ideal. The final test we have performed was to install Windows 10 on the computer, infect it with many nasty viruses and some ransomware, and then ask Emsisoft Anti-Malware to clean our mess. Fortunately, Emsisoft Anti-Malware had no issues in cleaning the malware that was roaming on our test laptop, and after a full system check, everything was good again. One very important aspect in assessing the performance of an antivirus engine is how fast it is in scanning your files for malware. Emsisoft Anti-Malware needed 6 minutes on average to scan our 126 GB Windows 10 partition with roughly 35 GB of data on it. It is not a long time, but it is not the fastest we have seen either. To get a second opinion, we also took a look at what other independent IT security organizations had to say about Emsisoft Anti-Malware:

• AV-Test awarded Emsisoft Anti-Malware with their top score of 6 points out of 6 for its Protection, 4.5 points out of 6 for Performance and 5 points out of 6 for Usability, in the tests they ran in 2016.

• AV-Comparatives awarded Emsisoft with their Advanced badge in the Performance test and with their top Advanced+ badge in the "Real World" Protection and Malware Removal tests.
• Virus Bulletin awarded Emsisoft Anti-Malware with their VB100 badge and measured a Proactive detection rate of 71.90% and a Reactive detection rate of 91.60%.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware offers an efficient antivirus module: it detected and removed all the samples we used in our tests, and scanning our test computer was reasonably fast. However, the way it handles removable drives is not great. Also, the fact that many of dangerous websites that we tried to visit were not blocked by the web shield is very bad.

Extra features

Emsisoft Anti-Malware does not include any additional tools like those you see in other similar security products. This company promises you "No bloat dual-scanner protection for your Windows PC." We have no issues with this approach, and we like the philosophy behind it. However, some users might expect an extra thing or two, like a Parental Controls module or a built-in VPN service for example. Or, maybe, at least a firewall module?

Default settings you might want to adjust

Emsisoft Anti-Malware is a security product that is well configured by default. However, there are a few things you could adjust:

• If you do not want to see some of the notifications displayed by Emsisoft Anti-Malware, like those about news or software updates, you can disable them in "Settings -> Notifications."
• Emsisoft Anti-Malware has a scheduled scan configured by default, but it is not enabled. We recommend that you enable it and let it run weekly to get a higher level of security. You can schedule scans if you follow this path: "Scan -> Scheduled Scans -> Custom Scan."

Emsisoft Anti-Malware is a security product that is well configured and, as you have seen, there are just a few things we can recommend you to change the way it works.

What is your opinion about Emsisoft Anti-Malware?

Emsisoft Anti-Malware is an anti-malware product that vowed to keep things simple and not to bundle any bloatware. The antivirus module works well and does not affect your computer's speed. We like that, but considering the poor web shield, the absence of a firewall module, and the lack of any additional tools, we feel that maybe Emsisoft Anti-Malware is not worth the price it asks. What do you think? Would you buy it, or would you rather keep on looking for alternatives?