Outpost Antivirus Pro 8

There's a visible trend toward simplicity in many modern antivirus products, tools that aim to work in the background without impacting the user at all. Outpost Antivirus Pro 8 ($29.95 direct; $39.95 for three licenses) clearly demonstrates that Agnitum doesn't subscribe to this set-and-forget doctrine. Outpost will frequently ask you, the user, to make significant security decisions. In testing it proved much more effective at blocking malware attacks than at cleaning up systems where malware had already invaded.

The program's un-fussy main window clearly displays current security status and a few significant statistics, along with the latest news from Agnitum. The Malware Scan tab lets you launch a quick, full, or custom scan, or view results of previous scans. On the Settings tab you can tweak a few high-level configuration settings or turn components on and off. That's probably all most users will need, but of course you can access the full array of advanced settings if necessary.

Fragile User Interface
Active malware on some of my test systems caused serious problems with Outpost's user interface. The UI is defined by a collection of simple HTML files, images, and supporting files. When Outpost is active it protects those files, but there's a protection gap during the installation process. On one test system, Outpost detected that its HTML files had been infected and promptly deleted them, leaving it with a broken UI. Malware on another system prevented access to the images, though textual components still showed up.

Just to see what would happen, I edited the user interface files myself, changing the main program image to that of a cartoon pig and replacing many of the textual elements with wisecracks. I couldn't make any changes with Outpost running, but rebooting into Safe Mode lifted that protection. Agnitum should perhaps consider devising a less-fragile user interface.

Installation Help Needed
Installation went smoothly on many of my malware-infested test systems, but I ran into trouble on others. Outpost won't install in Safe Mode, and malware on one system disables all access if it's not in Safe Mode. On several other systems, malware prevented a complete installation.

In each case I supplied specific logs to tech support and received a custom cleanup batch file in return. Getting the problem systems straightened out took a while, due to the back-and-forth email exchange of logs and fix-it files, but the total amount of my time required was a lot less than in similar situations that were solved using live chat remote-control support.

Little News from the Labs
The major independent antivirus testing labs have vastly more resources than I do. They can perform tests that tie up dozens of computer for months, or that use hundreds of thousands of files. Normally I like to reference their results along with my own hands-on testing results. Alas, of all the labs I follow only one includes Outpost in its testing.

Virus Bulletin's VB100 test is relatively simple. To achieve VB100 status, an antivirus product must correctly detect every sample from Virus Bulletin's wildlist, while avoiding any false positives (valid files identified as malware). Outpost received VB100 in nine of the last ten tests; a false positive derailed it in the most recent test.

For more about the independent labs and how I interpret their tests, see How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/TwS80nx2UQo/0,2817,2413939,00.asp

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