Security for everyone - Review VIPRE Advanced Security

VIPRE develops security products which promise to deliver above-average malware protection, which are easy to manage and do not slow down your computer. The latest version of the company's only security solution for home users is called VIPRE Advanced Security and, besides the usual security layers and modules, it also bundles a series of additional tools that could offer extra value for your money. We have used and tested VIPRE Advanced Security for a few days, and we want to share with you all the good aspects, and the negative ones, that we have discovered about it, in this review:

What is VIPRE Advanced Security good at?

VIPRE Advanced Security is a security suite that is good for:

• Users who want good anti-malware protection
• People who want to be well protected when online, no matter which web browser they prefer using
• Users who wish to have a security suite that does not need many system resources

Pros and cons

VIPRE Advanced Security has its good parts:

• The antivirus engine is very good at detecting and cleaning malware from your computer
• The web shield blocks you from visiting dangerous websites, in any web browser
• The security suite has little negative effect on the performance and speed of your Windows computer
• The user interface has lots of switches and big buttons, making it easy to use on touchscreens too

Unfortunately, this product has many weaknesses which decrease its efficiency:

• The firewall, although better than the default Windows Firewall, cannot adjust its protection mode automatically based on the network profile set in Windows, and even if you adjust it manually, it is still only average in efficiency
• The user interface looks ugly, and it feels like it was designed by someone with little to no experience in visual design and user experience
• Although its settings allow you to configure it to automatically scan USB drives when you plug them into your computer, it does not perform such scans. USB drives are scanned only when you access them
• There are no parental controls included, and there is no VPN service offered by this suite

Verdict

VIPRE Advanced Security is not a security product for everyone, because of its lack of balance. It has its good parts, like the powerful antivirus engine, efficient web shield, and the low impact on your computer's performance, but it also has many weaknesses. The user interface is not only coyote ugly, but it is also poorly organized. Its firewall module has issues with the way it is integrated with Windows and the network profile feature. Also, its efficiency is average even if you configure it manually, and there are few useful additional tools bundled in this security suite. Because of all these issues, we cannot recommend VIPRE Advanced Security to all our readers, and we think it is best that you try it first and see if you like it. Do not rush into spending your money on VIPRE Advanced Security without using the trial version first.

The download and installation experience

The first thing you have to do to get VIPRE Advanced Security on your PC is to provide the company with an email address. Then, you download a small 5.79MB executable file called vipre_advanced_security_trial.exe. Run it, and the installation wizard loads up. The first thing it asks you is to agree with the end user license agreement. You can also choose where you want the security suite to be installed. Then, the wizard begins downloading the files required for the installation of VIPRE Advanced Security. In total, you should get no more than 63.2MB of data. That is not much, but you also get an additional 303.9MB of virus definitions during the installation process, and that is quite a lot. Depending on your internet connection speed, this step can take a while, and it can also be a matter of concern if you are using a metered internet connection. However, it is also positive that the security suite automatically updates its virus definitions right from the start. Before the installation is ended, VIPRE Advanced Security asks if you want to submit security information to their ThreatNet service. We recommend that you do that because this information helps VIPRE react better against new malware threats. VIPRE launches its user interface which, at first glance, looks simple and easy to use. The first steps in getting VIPRE Advanced Security on your Windows computer are easy to go through. With the sole exception of an email address, there is no other personal information requested from you and that is a good thing. However, you should expect this process to take a while because you have to download a high amount of data.

Integration with Windows, web browsers and universal Windows platform apps

The first thing we checked regarding integration with Windows was whether VIPRE Advanced Security automatically disables Windows Firewall and Windows Defender. It did, and that means you should not find any conflicts or performance issues. We also checked whether the networking features work well and they did: we were able to join and create a homegroup on the local network, we were able to access the files and folders shared in the network, and we had no issues when we used universal Windows platform apps. We also found that the firewall module offered by VIPRE Advanced Security does not actively monitor the network profile you set in Windows. On our test computer, it did not even bother to ask whether the networks to which we connected were private or public. It trusted every new network as being safe, and that is not a good thing, especially if you connect to public WiFi often. To protect you online, VIPRE Advanced Security scans and filters all the internet traffic from your computer, and that means that you are protected in any web browser you prefer using. We also wanted to see if VIPRE has a meaningful negative effect on the performance of our test computer. We first measured the boot times with BootRacer, before and after installing the security suite on the PC. The security suite had no impact on our test system's boot time. Then, we checked how much RAM it needs to keep all its protection services up and running. On our test laptop, it consumed about 160MB of RAM, which is not much by today's standards. To check whether the internet or local network speeds are affected by VIPRE Advanced Security, we also ran a few tests with Speedtest.net and with LAN Speed Test. The speeds were the same before and after installing the security suite, which means that it has no adverse effect on internet or local network data transfers. It is an excellent result! VIPRE Advanced Security is a security suite that is integrated with Windows and most of its networking features. We appreciate as positive the fact that it needs few system resources to do its job, but we do not like that its firewall module is not able to automatically adjust its protection level according to the network profile you set in Windows.

Ease of use & configuration

VIPRE Advanced Security offers a simple user interface, although our opinion is that it is an ugly one. It is a fixed size window with few sections, options, and buttons on it. Normally, we would like that, but the way VIPRE decided to throw everything in is uninspired. Portions of text use a font that is too small to understand, there are large blank spaces that have no meaning, and there is no structure when it comes to dividing settings and features from one another. Unfortunately, the user interface is identical to the one we saw on VIPRE's security solutions from the last couple of years. Even if the user interface looks like a child doodled it, there is also a good part about it: you can use it on any device you own, including on touchscreen devices, because the features and settings are usually controlled by switches or large buttons. One other feature that we liked about VIPRE Advanced Security is the large number of available help options. There are help tooltips displayed for complex settings, offline help files and access to phone support, community forums and documentation. If you are an experienced PC user, you are probably going to be quite happy with the logs and statistics included in VIPRE Advanced Security. However, if you are a beginner, and you expect to see visual statistics that are easy to understand, then you are out of luck, as you do not get anything like that. During the time in which we tested VIPRE Advanced Security, we saw it display alerts about malware infected files, but we did not see any firewall notifications. VIPRE Advanced Security is a security product with an ugly user interface that would benefit from a redesign. We appreciate some aspects of it like the large buttons and switches, but the chaotic way in which it is organized makes it rather unappealing. On the next page of this review, you can see how capable VIPRE Advanced Security is to protect your computer from network attacks and malware. You can also see what additional features are included in this security suite, and check our recommendations for what settings you should adjust.

Firewall protection

The firewall module included in VIPRE Advanced Security does not automatically detect when you change the network profile in Windows. Even worse, it does not react in any way when you connect to new networks and does not even ask whether the new network should be trusted or not. On our test laptop, it treated all networks as trusted, and that is unfortunate. To get an idea if the firewall module is capable, we ran a few tests with Nessus and Nmap, two popular network vulnerability scanners. At first, we set our test computer to use a private network profile, both in Windows and in VIPRE Advanced Security. In this case, Nmap found four open ports and Nessus found three open ports and one vulnerability to man-in-the-middle attacks. Then, we switched to a public network profile, and although Nmap did not manage to find any ports left open, Nessus still found one. Additionally, other information these two scanners could get in both situations was the MAC address and the name of the operating system from our test computer, but this information is not a security risk. The firewall module offered by VIPRE Advanced Security is not great, although it is better than the default Windows Firewall. We are sure that the company can improve it, at least regarding the way it adjusts to network profiles set in Windows.

Antivirus and antispyware

As usual, we started our antivirus and antispyware tests by checking how VIPRE Advanced Security protects you while surfing the web. For starters, you should know that this security suite can protect you no matter which web browser you prefer using, as it filters all the internet traffic that goes on your computer. We used the most popular web browsers today - Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Opera - and tried to load a series of dangerous websites. The great news is that VIPRE Advanced Security stopped us from visiting all the websites we have checked. Then, we evaluated what the antivirus does when you work with removable drives. We took a USB memory stick and copied a bunch of viruses on it. We plugged it into our test computer, and we looked at what the security suite does. It did not ask us if we wanted to scan the removable drive, and it did not do it on its own either. However, when we opened the folder containing the malware, the antivirus suite reacted instantly and removed all the infected files, in just a minute. Next, we ran our final antivirus test: we took our test computer, we installed Windows 10 on it, and then we infected it with lots of viruses, including some nasty ransomware. Then, we asked VIPRE Advanced Security to install and clean our unresponsive machine. Fortunately, the security suite managed to do all that without a glitch in the process. In the end, the computer was clean and usable again. The antivirus engine is pretty good at detecting and removing malware, but it does not excel when it comes to speed. It took it about 13 minutes on average to run a full scan of our 126GB system partition with 35GB of data on it. It is not slow, but it is not fast either. To get a second opinion, we also looked at what independent security organizations had to say about VIPRE Advanced Security:

• AV-TEST gave VIPRE a score of 6 points out of 6 for protection, 5.5 points for performance and 5.5 points out of 6 for usability.
• AV-Comparatives awarded VIPRE's antivirus with their Advanced+ badge in all their latest tests: "Real World Protection Test," "File Detection Test" and "Performance Test."
• Virus Bulletin gave VIPRE their VB100 badge and measured a reactive detection rate of 95.76% and a proactive detection rate of 70.53%.

VIPRE Advanced Security is a security product that offers a good antivirus engine. The web shield excels at protecting you from dangerous websites, and the antivirus engine is great at detecting and removing malware from your computer.

Extra features

VIPRE Advanced Security bundles a few additional features and tools that may or may not be useful to you:

• Auto Patch Updates - automatically updates outdated third-party apps installed on your computer, which helps increase your security. VIPRE can patch a good list of apps which you can find here: What third party applications does Auto Patch work with?
• Social Watch - Scans your Facebook account for malicious content. Facebook already does that though.
• Secure File Eraser - lets you delete files and folders permanently so that they cannot be recovered easily.
• History Cleaner - deletes the web browsing and web search history from your browsers. Every web browser offers this option by default, so there is not a much added-value here.

Some of the additional tools offered by VIPRE Advanced Security can be useful to their customers. We liked the presence of the Auto Patch feature. Unfortunately, there are no parental controls included, and there is no VPN service available.

Default settings you might want to adjust

There are quite a few settings which you might consider adjusting at the way VIPRE Advanced Security works on your computer. Some of them can enhance your security, while others can make your experience nicer:

• Enable Catch Up Scan - VIPRE Advanced Security is set by default to run a quick antivirus scan each day, and a full system scans each Sunday. However, if a scan is not run, because your computer is turned off at that time, or because of whatever reason, you can configure the antivirus to do a quick scan at the next available opportunity. You can find this option in "Manage -> Antivirus -> Catch Up Scan."
• Enable Second Layer Scan - if a quick scan finds a threat on your computer, VIPRE automatically runs a full system scan. This is a good way of increasing your security. You can find this option in "Manage -> Antivirus -> Second Layer Scan."
• Intrusion Detection Systems - if you are concerned about your firewall protection, you might want to turn on the firewall's Intrusion Detection Systems. You can manage the intrusion rules in "Manage -> Firewall -> Intrusion Detection Systems."
• Hide news items. By default, VIPRE Advanced Security is set to "Show News Items." If you do not want to see any news, you can turn this setting off in "Account -> MyVIPRE News -> Show News Items."

There are some settings in VIPRE Advanced Security which you can enable or adjust to increase your security level.

What is your opinion about VIPRE Advanced Security?

VIPRE Advanced Security is a good security suite when it comes to protecting you from malware and dangerous websites. However, it does not impress when it comes to its firewall module or the additional tools offered. Moreover, its user interface is poorly organized and looks like a small child doodled it in a hurry. Before closing this review, share with us your opinion about this product. Would you buy VIPRE Advanced Security? Comment below and let's discuss.