Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus is the easiest-to-use hosted endpoint protection product we tested this time around. Part of that is because it’s an easily deployed cloud service, but mostly it’s because Avast leaves out some of the really complicated stuff. This includes any form of endpoint detection and response (EDR) or any support for mobile endpoints. Reporting is still a bit weak as well. All of that keeps it behind our Editors’ Choice winners this time around, including Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra, F-Secure Elements, and Sophos Intercept X. On the plus side, however, Avast does cover all the bases most small businesses need, and it also throws in a VPN service, Sandbox browser, and data shredder.
Avast Business Pricing and Plans
Since last we tested it, Avast has made big changes to how it prices what it calls its “next-gen antivirus” platform. There are multiple tiers, including Avast Business Antivirus, Antivirus Pro, and Antivirus Pro Plus, but it’s actually more complicated than that. Each tier targets different types of endpoints and devices, so pricing is a la carte.
The base tier is Avast Business Antivirus, which starts at $36.99 per device per year. This is a macOS product, however, and only handles AV and anti-malware for that operating system. It also lacks some of the features of the other tiers, which explains why it’s less expensive.
Avast Business Antivirus Pro starts at $46.99 per device per year, but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison to the lower tier. This one is aimed primarily at Windows Server endpoints, which includes specific features for SharePoint Server and Exchange Server. However, that’s only for the on-premises versions of those products, not the cloud services.
We tested Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus, which starts at $56.99 per device per year and provides the broadest feature set for all your Windows desktop endpoints. These include comprehensive malware threat detection, email and file scanning, and Avast’s VPN and data shredding features.
Mixing and matching these tiers to cover all of your devices can get complicated. Fortunately, Avast has a pricing calculator available on its website. Overall, however, Avast’s numbers make it one of the pricier products we reviewed, even when compared to our Editors’ Choice picks, such as Sophos (which comes in at between $20 and $40 per device per year) or F-Secure Elements (which starts at $46.20 per device per year). Moreover, your costs will go up even more if you throw in popular add-on features, like patch management or cloud backup, although Avast has lately begun discounting these when you buy them in bundled packages.
Getting Started
Avast’s web console is much improved from previous generations. The main dashboard gives a quick overview of the device count, number of threats detected, and a trendline of threats, but it doesn’t include significant detail. You can click on buttons to jump to the reports section, so while the UI is not ideal, it’s still workable. There is also a new patch management dashboard that gives you a count of how many devices need patching. This deserves some unpacking since it is, perhaps, the biggest improvement to Avast.
The Patches page lists Windows devices that require software updates. The catalog of available patches covers Windows itself and over 100 different software packages from such vendors as Apple, Google, and Adobe, among others. Patching has always been the core of a good security program, so being able to patch and roll back systems from here without the aid of Active Directory is a phenomenal benefit to small businesses. This feature alone boosts its score from previous years and pushes it closer to products like WatchGuard Adaptive Defense 360 and Bitdefender GravityZone Ultra.
The Devices page presents a significant amount of detail regarding threats. In addition to showing the date detected and threat name, it also indicates which mode was responsible for detecting it. Knowing whether the File Shield, Behavior Shield, or Web Shield blocked the threat can help you understand where and how users are being attacked, which should drive newer and better security policies.
You can quickly add new devices by clicking the Download Antivirus button and choosing an installer package, which you can either download immediately or email download links to select addresses. You can also group devices together with settings templates. New to the product is the ability to remote into machines. The free version includes five sessions per month at 15 minutes per session. This is enough to do some basic emergency administrative tasks. If you need more, premium packages start at $499.99 per year. While pricey, this is a massively helpful capability, and it’s good to see Avast roll it out.
The default settings template is suitable for general use, but you can also define a custom one under the Device Settings page if you have specific needs. DeepScreen, which allows Avast to deal with unknown files, is active by default. You can also make the antivirus more aggressive by activating a hardened mode. You can add file paths and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) to an exclusion list if Avast begins to report false positives. For testing purposes, we used the most aggressive settings.
Notifications are also straightforward to set up. The available notifications are all on a single page with a toggle switch for each. Below each is a pulldown that lets you specify if you want that notification in email instantly, batched and delivered at the end of the week, or not at all. There is enough detail in the notifications to be helpful without being annoying.
All-New Reporting and Patch Management
Reporting has been completely overhauled. You can now schedule reports and get a broader range of information. While it doesn’t include a true audit log for things like user and policy changes, it does include a report for checking in on who used the remote access feature, which is a huge benefit when that level of access is available.
While it requires an additional license, you can opt for the ability to check for missing software patches on each endpoint. Patching has long been a struggle for smaller businesses, which often lack a way to centrally manage them. While Microsoft, in particular, has done a lot to help keep Windows systems more reliably up-to-date, patches still slip through the cracks. Avast delivers a comfortable user interface that lets you review unapplied patches and apply them on the spot, thereby cutting down on potential vulnerabilities.
Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus Testing Results
As part of our endpoint testing suite, our first task was to try out Avast’s anti-phishing capabilities. This feature doesn’t require a plugin, so we were able to proceed directly to testing. We chose ten known phishing pages from PhishTank, a collection of suspected and verified phishing websites. Avast detected and blocked all ten.
Next, we used Metasploit’s AutoPwn 2 feature to launch a browser-based attack against the system using a known vulnerable version of Chrome with the Java 1.7 runtime installed. We tried a series of attacks that were likely to succeed in granting a remote shell, but none of the attacks succeeded.
Our next trick was to try to execute a copy of Windows Calculator with a standard Meterpreter binary tacked onto the end of it. Avast detected the executable, prevented it from launching, and removed it from the desktop. Similarly, we tested Avast against a stock set of Veil 3.0 encoded Meterpreter executables, including PowerShell, Auto-IT, Python, and Ruby. No dice; Antivirus Pro Plus didn’t allow any of them to execute.
For our last test, we disabled the network connection on our VM, extracted a set of known malware executables called TheZoo, and attempted to run them. Again, Avast’s signature-based detection function caught them all. It was even able to block several versions of the CryptoLocker ransomware, which was good, considering how much the ransomware threat has grown in recent years.
Third-party testing confirms our results. AV-Test awarded Avast Business Antivirus Pro Plus a 6 in its August 2021 tests, ranking it as Outstanding. Avast blocked 100% of 0-day malware attacks in real-world testing using 303 samples, and it blocked 99.9% of widespread malware discovered in the four weeks before testing. That test used 18,402 samples.
Good, But Potentially Pricey
Avast Business Pro Plus is an excellent service, and it makes managing security an easy task for a small business administrator. It also offers a significant level of protection against threats and has evolved far beyond where it was the last time we tested it. While not entirely on par with Bitdefender GravityZone, it is one of the better solutions available for protecting a small business organization. It still lacks mobile device management, which is becoming a standard part of most endpoint management products, and it also lacks EDR/XDR, which is becoming a mainstay of business-grade endpoint protection. Still, Avast excels at being one of the easiest solutions to manage, which could be a huge selling point for organizations that lack the IT savvy needed to handle complex administrative tasks.
