Kaspersky Antivirus 2022 - Review
Subscribe now Kaspersky Anti-Virus starting from € 20.99 Taking advantage of one of the great discounts that the company usually offers to new users, you can access a license 1 year of Kaspersky Anti-Virus which covers 3 devices even for just under € 20 until the first renewal. In addition, the license can be extended to include up to 10 devices and two years of service, with an additional prorated discount. The offer is convenient and is part of what we expect for a good level safety product. However, once the initial discount is over, the price could become daunting.
In any case, as we said, Anti-Virus is only one of the packages available from Kaspersky, and the basic one. In fact, by choosing the Kaspersky Internet Security package, a firewall is added to the Anti-Virus product, a secure browser that protects online transactions, as well as protection against possible webcam violations. The free version of the Kaspersky Safe Kids parental control system includes content blocking and monitoring of time spent online, along with the ad blocker and tracker function to safeguard your online privacy, not forgetting a free version from Kaspersky's VPN with 200 MB of traffic per day.
Switching to Kaspersky Internet Security, on the other hand, allows you to access apps for Mac and Android. As in the case of Anti-Virus, Kaspersky Internet Security also has an attractive starting price, starting with a 1-year plan with three devices, while the two-year plan with five devices is slightly less interesting, for example, than the corresponding Bitdefender offer. Internet Security.
Kaspersky Total Security, on the other hand, is the company's top of the range and includes the full commercial version of Kaspersky Safe Kids, with some extra features such as GPS location and a password manager for PC, Mac and Android, as well as a backup tool for Windows. There isn't much else, but this suite is only slightly more expensive than Internet Security.
The Security Cloud range offers all the same features, along with Kaspersky's "adaptive protection technology", which for example warns you if the password you choose for a given account is too easy to guess or offers you to turn on the VPN when connecting to unsecured networks. While there are more interesting packages on the market, Security Cloud has a few arrows in its bow. Those looking for bargains will appreciate Security Cloud Free, which offers good antivirus coverage at no cost. And while there are only a couple of additional features, the price is close enough to Total Security to entice you to upgrade.
Plans & Pricing
Anti-Virus:1 year / 1 PC: € 20.99 until renewal
1 year / 2 PCs: € 24.49 until renewal
1 year / 3 PCs: 31.49 € until renewal
1 year / 4 PCs: € 34.99 until renewal
1 year / 5 PCs: € 45.49 until renewal
2 years / 1 PC: € 37.09 until renewal Other plans:
Kaspersky Internet Security: from € 34.99
Kaspersky Total Security: from € 41.99
Kaspersky Security Cloud Personal: from € 79.99
Kaspersky Anti-Virus
The installation process of Kaspersky is simple, straightforward and fast. The trial version download links are well highlighted on the website, and the installer takes up little space as well. It was enough to activate a trial license to be able to use Kaspersky Anti-Virus immediately, without the obligation to use or create a My Kaspersky account.Also from the point of view of presence on the system, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2021 it introduces only four services and four core processes in the background, far fewer than other competitors. We have not found any tangible impact on system performance.
We have tested the "defensive capabilities" of this antivirus, trying to remove important files, terminate or suspend certain processes, stop services, even uninstall or disable drivers and disable certain features by acting on the Registry or through the configuration file. In general, Anti-Virus has almost always prevented us from compromising the security of the system, except for a few minor cases of little relevance.
What's New
Kaspersky Anti-Virus is one of the main products for a long time, so much so that the first PC versions ran on MS-DOS. If the saying “winning team doesn't change” is true, Kaspersky hasn't changed the latest versions too much. Nevertheless, some improvements have been made.Now, the application is more organized and full of settings, including options that allow you to reduce the consumption of resources in case of low autonomy, while using apps in full screen or under load on the CPU or hard drive. It is also possible to save the current settings and restore them later, a convenient backup if you intend to use the same configuration on multiple machines.
File scans also include those of Microsoft Office (maximum size 8 MB) , for greater effectiveness in detecting threats.
When it comes to performance, the installer is more efficient and reliable as it uses older .NET versions rather than forcing you to download new ones. Updating databases is also faster.
Subscribe now Kaspersky Anti-Virus for € 19.99 per year instead of € 29.99 Kaspersky also decided to abandon Application Advisor which was showing data from reputation of executable files. You can still check it via the menu that opens with the right mouse button, so it's not a big loss.
Support for older versions of Microsoft Edge prior to Chromium has been revised (now you can only analyze the traffic), while the Kaspersky Protection extension no longer supports Internet Explorer. So nothing sensational, except some minor improvements here and there.
Antivirus
Kaspersky Anti-Virus offers a simple interface that shows the protection status and four buttons: start scan, update database, view reports and open the on-screen keyboard. The scan pane allows you to perform quick or thorough scans, check external drives or files and folders, with the ability to scan selected items via the Windows Explorer context menu. The scans are quite fast, about 20 minutes for 50 GB of data, and it is possible to automatically schedule the analyzes on a daily basis (weekdays and holidays), on weekends, or on a weekly or monthly basis.A function Smart that we appreciated is the ability to resume scanning if the computer is turned off during analysis, or schedule scans only when the computer is in standby or with the screensaver active, to minimize the impact on performance.
Kaspersky Anti-Virus also offers a good level of control for more experienced users, as you can select the areas of the system to scan, the types of files to be scanned, the detection engines that can be used and the response to detected threats (permanent removal, deletion or action chosen by the user via prompt).
One aspect that is missing (and noticeable) is the ability to perform custom scans, unlike other competitors such as Avast or Avira. If you want to scan a custom download folder or scan documents from a specific network folder, you can only manually configure Selective Scan.
Protection
In our tests, Anti-Virus is it behaved quite well. We've recovered some recent malicious URLs, including phishing scams, and while these were quite new threats, Kaspersky proved effective in about 30% of cases (much more than Windows Defender).In 2021, it's A certification test was conducted by AV-Comparative, where Kaspersky achieved a 94% block score. Even in the ransomware simulations, we found a very good result: the malicious files were immediately quarantined and the few compromised files immediately restored.
Other functions
Kaspersky Anti-Virus offers something in further on the anti-malware functions. Firstly, a limited version of Kaspersky VPN: it does not allow you to choose the location, since it automatically connects to the nearest server, the kill switch is missing and the data traffic is only 200 MB per day, but it could be useful in case of occasional connections to public Wi-Fi.We can say the same with the password manager. It allows you to store website and app passwords, automatically store and populate credit card information and addresses, save secure notes, and more. However, the free version is quite limited, with a maximum of 15 storable passwords. The advantage is that you can install it independently of Kaspersky Anti-Virus.
The on-screen keyboard protects against keylogging of usernames and passwords, as well as other sensitive data. We tested the feature with some commercial keyloggers, and none were able to log keystrokes.
Vulnerability Scan scans the system for apps with known and reported vulnerabilities on the CVE system. The good thing is that it also reports outdated and potentially risky versions of various apps, however you will have to manually fix it, for example by manually downloading and installing updated versions.
Other potentially useful features are wizards: there is one that helps you keep an eye on the integrity of Windows, looking for possible settings changes caused by malware, with the ability to fix problems in a single operation. Another work on the browser configuration, too bad it focuses only on Internet Explorer, although this makes sense since some apps are based on the IE engine, but perhaps it would make more sense to combine these two functions in a single check.
There is also a privacy tool (Privacy Cleaner) that allows you to remove some records of your activities from Windows and apps, such as your search history and cookies, although it's not impressive. It didn't work with Firefox, for example, and in any case you can find better in the freeware market.
Finally, Kaspersky Rescue Disk is a boot environment that helps you identify the most ingrained threats that could render Windows unusable. . Although useful, it can be downloaded for free from the company's website, so much so that within Kaspersky Anti-Virus there is only a link to its official page.
In general, the extras offered by Kaspersky are few interesting or in any case free regardless of Anti-Virus, and in any case do not hold up against the competition. Of course, an antivirus should not be chosen for its extras, but we would like to see something better from the company
Conclusion
Kaspersky Anti-Virus does not offer as many interesting extras like the competition, but strictly speaking of its engine, it is one of the best antivirus on the market, which we recommend without reservation.Subscribe now Kaspersky Anti-Virus from € 20.99
