Bitdefender Antivirus Plus – Review 2020

The entry-level antivirus from Bitdefender boasts the name Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, and the Plus is very much deserved. This tool totally handles all the basic antivirus tasks effectively, and then goes way beyond in terms of additional security features. Feature-wise, it could take on many security suites and win. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus remains a top choice when it comes to protecting your PC’s security.

Some antivirus products, such as Cylance Smart Antivirus and F-Secure, stick strictly with the essentials, wiping out existing malware infestations and defending against new attacks. Bitdefender, by contrast, packs a huge collection of security-centric features, among them password management, enhanced security for online transactions, ransomware protection, and even a VPN. To be sure you realize how much you’re getting, the installer runs a slideshow detailing the features while doing its job.

At $39.99 per year for one license, Bitdefender’s pricing matches that of many competitors. More than a dozen others go for roughly the same price, among them Kaspersky, Webroot, Trend Micro, and ESET NOD32 Antivirus. F-Secure charges $39.99 too, but that gets you three licenses for the price. Three Bitdefender licenses will run you $59.99 per year. You can also get five licenses for $69.99, or 10 for $79.99. McAfee costs $59.99 per year, the same as Bitdefender’s three-license price, but with McAfee you can protect every Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household.

This would have been the 2021 edition of the Bitdefender product line. However, for some time the company has been continuously refining the feature set of each product rather than holding back new features for one big version release. The latest products no longer carry the year as a version number.

Bitdefender’s main window displays a security dashboard, with a left-rail menu that offers detailed access to features. Security recommendations occupy the top of the rest of the window, with a collection of what the product calls Quick Actions below. The default Quick Actions let you launch a quick, system, or vulnerability scan, open the VPN, and configure Safepay online protection. You can configure the product to put the File Shredder or Wallet password manager in the main display, in place of an action that’s not your fave.

Clicking Protection, Privacy, or Utilities in the left menu brings up detailed pages of features and settings, though some of the features only available at the suite level. For example, on the Protection page the Firewall and Antispam items require an upgrade. Under Privacy, the parental advisor and camera / mic protection aren’t available. Under Utilities, you can use the file shredder or configure the Profiles system, but that’s all.

For year, Bitdefender’s Autopilot mode quietly handled security issues without requiring user intervention. Currently, Autopilot takes a more active role. The aim is to make sure you get the full benefit of this product’s many, many features. For example, during this review it suggested that we run a scan for outdated (and hence vulnerable) applications. Autopilot might also suggest that you explore the Wallet password manager, or check the privacy of your online accounts.

Glowing Lab Test Scores

Three of the four labs that we follow include Bitdefender in their testing. The researchers at AV-Comparatives perform a wide variety of tests; we follow four of them. Products that pass a test earn Standard certification, while those that do significantly more than the minimum receive Advanced or even Advanced+ certification. Bitdefender took Advanced+ in all four tests, the only product I follow to recently achieve this status. Avira Free Security came close, with three Advanced+ and one Advanced.

In the three-part test regularly reported by AV-Test Institute, products can earn up to six points for good protection against malware, little effect on performance, and good usability (meaning minimal false positives). Bitdefender earned the full six points for protection and performance, but lost a half-point for a few false positives. At 17.5 points out of a possible 18, it still earned the designation Top Product, along with five others. F-Secure Anti-Virus and Trend Micro topped the list this time, with a perfect 18 points.

The tests performed by London-based MRG-Effitas are a bit different from the rest. To pass this lab’s banking Trojans test, a product needs a perfect score; anything less is failure. Another test using a wide variety of malware offers two passing levels. If a product absolutely blocks every malware installation attempt, it passes at Level 1. If some malware gets through, but is eliminated within 24 hours, that earns Level 2. Anything else is a fail. Bitdefender passed the banking test, as did just over half the tested products. It also received Level 1 certification in the broad-spectrum test, along with Kasperky, Sophos Home Premium, Norton, and six others.

SE Labs attempts to simulate the real world of malware as closely as possible for testing purposes, using a capture/replay system to present each product with a real-world Web-based attack. Certification from this lab comes at five levels, AAA, AA, A, B, and C. Alas, Bitdefender doesn’t appear in the latest report from SE Labs.

We have devised an algorithm that normalizes all the test results onto a 10-point scale and returns an aggregate lab score, as long as the product has results from at least two labs. Avast, Avira, and Kaspersky Anti-Virus are among the products that appear in reports from all four labs. In terms of aggregate score, Avira and Norton rule that group, with 9.8 of 10 possible points. Bitdefender holds the top score among products tested by three labs, a near-perfect 9.9.

Impressive Online Protection

Even though the labs heap praise on Bitdefender, we still need our own hands-on experience. Our malware protection test starts when we open the folder containing an eclectic collection of malware samples whose behavior we’ve analyzed. At this point, Bitdefender displayed a notification, saying, “Disinfection in progress… please wait until complete.”

This proved to be a long wait—more than 10 minutes. When the antivirus finished, it offered a link to display just what it accomplished. The real-time on-access protection system eliminated 83 percent of the samples on sight. We continued the test by launching those samples that survived this initial culling.

Bitdefender caught many of the remaining samples at or shortly after launch, though in several cases it didn’t prevent the installer from planting executable files on the test system. Bitdefender detected 89 percent of the samples and scored 8.6 of 10 possible points, which isn’t great. However, when the labs give a product top ratings, we give their results more weight than our hands-on tests.

Tested with this same set of samples Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus achieved 100 percent detection and scored a perfect 10 points. G Data came close, with 9.8 points.

Because gathering and analyzing malware takes a significant amount of time effort, we use the same sample set for many months. To check how well an antivirus handles the very latest attacks, we use a feed of malware-hosting URLs supplied by MRG-Effitas. Typically, these are no more than a day or two. We launch each one in turn, discarding any URLs that are already defunct, and record whether the antivirus diverts the browser from the dangerous URL, eliminates the malicious download, or sits on its hands idly, doing nothing.

Bitdefender’s Online Threat Protection did a great job, blocking access to 89 percent of the malware-hosting URLs. The regular antivirus component wiped out another 10 percent at the download phase, for a total of 99 percent protection, the same as Trend Micro and G Data. McAfee, Sophos, and Vipre Antivirus Plus eked out one more point for 100 percent protection.

Phenomenal Phishing Protection

Malware attacks your computer, or your data, to rake in cash for its creators, but writing malicious code that can get past modern antivirus tools is tough. Phishing attacks go straight for the most vulnerable component—you, the user. No coding required; they just need to make a convincing duplicate of a banking site or other sensitive page. Once you log in to the fake, the fraudsters own your account. These fraudulent sites quickly get blacklisted and taken down. But the phishers just build new ones.

Any competent coder could put together a protective system that steers browsers away from sites on a phishing blacklist, but that’s not enough in itself. A really good phishing protection system analyzes pages for signs of fraud, and blocks even those too new to be blacklisted. Some products, such as Norton, distinguish between blacklisted sites and those identified by analysis. Bitdefender’s Online Threat Protection doesn’t make that distinction, and it proved extremely effective in our testing.

We prepare for this test by scouring phishing-analysis sites for the latest reported frauds, making sure to get a goodly number that are too new for the blacklist. We launch each in four browsers. The product under test protects one, of course, while the other three rely on protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. If one or more browsers can’t load a page, we discard it. If the page isn’t clearly attempting to steal login credentials, likewise we toss it. When we have enough data points, we run the numbers.

Bitdefender detected almost every one of the fraudulent pages, coming in with a 99 percent detection rate, the same as McAfee AntiVirus Plus and Norton. Kaspersky and Trend Micro did even better, managing to detect and block 100 percent of the frauds.

Network Threat Prevention

Bitdefender’s Network Threat Protection component works alongside Online Threat Protection to detect and fend off attacks on security vulnerabilities in the operating system and popular applications. This sort of protection is more commonly associated with a firewall, but a few antivirus products such as Bitdefender and Norton include it.

To see this feature in action, we bombarded the test system with 30-odd exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool. This collection includes exploits aimed at Windows, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and several Adobe products, among others. Bitdefender flagged 45 percent of the pages hosting these attacks as dangerous, and its antivirus component nabbed another 29 percent by identifying the malware payload. Its total score of 74 percent is very good.

Some products flag exploits using their official CVE name. Bitdefender didn’t do so in its warnings, but when I checked the logs, I found plenty of detail. Of the exploits it detected, Bitdefender identified 60 percent by name.

Norton AntiVirus Plus is typically the big winner in this test, detecting well over 80 percent and identifying the majority by name. Exploit protection isn’t a core antivirus component, especially if you keep your operating system and applications up to date, but in Bitdefender’s case it’s a nice bonus.

See How We Test Security Software

Additional Browser Protection

In addition to the very visible protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites, Bitdefender also includes an Anti-Tracker component. Anti-Tracker installs as a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. Do check to make sure it’s installed in all three. While you’re at it, consider installing Bitdefender Traffic Light, a browser extension that marks up search results with colored icons, green for safe, red for dangerous, grey for not yet checked.

When you visit a site that contains ad trackers, site analytics trackers, or other trackers, Bitdefender puts the number of trackers on the extension’s toolbar icon. By default, its active Do Not Track system blocks them all. You can click for a summary by category, which includes an estimate of the page load time saved. And you can disable blocking of specific categories. You’ll find similar Do Not Track functionality in a variety of security tools including Abine Blur Premium and Kaspersky Internet Security.

Enhanced Ransomware Protection

No antivirus is perfect. They’ll all occasionally miss a brand-new attack. Sure, within a few days most security companies push out an update that eliminates the new threat, but once ransomware has wrecked your files, that’s no help. Bitdefender has been on the cutting edge of ransomware protection, and the latest edition further enhances this technology.

The Advanced Threat Defense feature supplements regular antivirus scanning with behavior-based detection, including detection of ransomware behavior. Network Threat Prevention blocks the exploit avenues that some ransomware attacks rely on. At the first hint of a possible ransomware attack, Ransomware Remediation backs up important files, restoring them after Bitdefender neutralizes the attack.

Ransomware of necessity must modify your important files, replacing them with encrypted versions. One simple defense is to ban all changes to files in protected locations unless the program making the change is authorized. That’s how Bitdefender’s Safe Files feature used to work. On detecting a new program, whether it’s a new image editor you installed or a pernicious ransomware attacker, Safe Files would ask you whether to trust the program.

There are a few problems with this technique. First, it adds a speed bump any time you edit files with a new valid program. Second, and more important, it relies on the user to decide whether a file is trustworthy. Maybe you weren’t paying attention. Maybe your finger slipped, and you clicked Allow by accident. You could accidentally release an attack. Bitdefender’s latest edition has retired Safe Files, relying instead on its enhanced Ransomware Remediation.

Testing this protection layer wasn’t easy. The Bitdefender Shield real-time protection components wiped out all our actual ransomware samples on sight. To even get a glimpse of the other protective layers, we had to turn off real-time protection. In fact, we couldn’t copy the samples back to the test system without disabling network protection and web protection. We did make sure to leave Advanced Threat Defense and Ransomware Remediation active.

Almost all our samples are the common file-encrypting ransomware, though we do have one screen locker and one whole-disk encryptor. One of the file encryptors saved itself by refraining from any activity, perhaps frightened by Bitdefender’s presence. Advanced Threat Defense handled all but one of the rest, including the screen locker. The pernicious Petya ransomware got past the behavior-based detection system and encrypted the virtual drive, rending the virtual test system unusable. Remember, though, that we had to disable numerous real-time protection layers to even perform this test.

We’ve occasionally run across ransomware protection systems that don’t start early enough at boot time and hence can miss ransomware loaded at startup. To check Bitdefender’s protection, we copied several samples that triggered protection into the Startup folder and rebooted. Bitdefender eliminated them all.

We also tried running KnowBe4’s RanSim ransomware simulator. Advanced Threat Detection eliminated the simulator’s essential components, making it impossible to get any detailed reports, which is a fine result.

Ransomware-specific protection components are showing up in more and more antivirus products, but most don’t go as far as Bitdefender. Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security is among the few others with a multi-layer approach. It blocks unauthorized changes to protected files, detects ransomware behavior, and restores any files that got encrypted before the behavior-based detection kicked in. Webroot uses behavior-based detection, and its journal-and-rollback system for handling behavior of unknown files can even reverse the effects of ransomware.

A Wallet for Your Passwords

Password management is a feature more commonly found in security suites than in standalone antivirus products (though Avast products, even Avast Free Antivirus, include password management). Bitdefender’s Wallet feature stores passwords, personal information, and credit card details for use on websites. It also saves passwords for applications and Wi-Fi networks.

Wallet has changed very little in the last few versions. It requires a strong master password, separate from your Bitdefender Central password. It allows creation of multiple wallets (password databases), and lets you choose whether to sync between devices or keep passwords local-only. And it automatically captures login credentials as you type them and replays them as needed.

In testing, it managed standard password entry forms but couldn’t handle some two-page login systems. Wallet doesn’t store as much personal data for web forms as some dedicated password managers, but it correctly filled all the fields that it does store.

When you’re signing up for a new account, you can use Wallet’s password generator, which defaults to creating 15-character passwords made of letters and numbers. That’s a good default length, but I advise enabling the use of special characters, for even stronger passwords.

Wallet completely handles the basics of password management but doesn’t go much beyond that. If you want high-end features like automatic password changing, two-factor authentication, secure sharing of credentials, or handling of password inheritance, you should consider a standalone password manager utility.

Bitdefender VPN

Bitdefender’s many layers of antivirus, web, and network protection keep your devices and their data safe. However, when you connect to the internet your data in transit could be at risk. To ensure privacy for your data, you need a VPN (virtual private network). When you connect using a VPN, nobody, not even the owner of the shady Wi-Fi network you’re using, can access your network traffic, and you’ll be harder to track as you move across the web.

Pricing for Premium

Bitdefender VPN isn’t available as a standalone product. Even the feature-complete Premium VPN requires that you’re already running a Bitdefender antivirus or security suite. This VPN is a rebranded version of the Hotspot Shield VPN service. Bitdefender uses Hotspot Shield’s servers and services, but your information is secure with Bitdefender. Hotspot Shield cannot see your online activities and only receives a Bitdefender identifier.

On installation, you get a seven-day trial of the premium service. After that, it switches to the limited free mode unless you pay for a Premium subscription. The free version of Bitdefender’s VPN restricts your use to 200MB per day. That’s more generous than TunnelBear VPN‘s free version, which offers only 500MB per month. The free version also limits which VPN servers you can access. At the other extreme, the free version of ProtonVPN doesn’t impose any data limits.

If you decide to upgrade to the Premium edition of the Bitdefender VPN, you get access to all available VPN servers, with no data cap. An annual subscription costs $39.99 per year, or you can pay $6.99 per month. That’s a remarkably low monthly cost, comparable to very affordable Mullvad VPN, which costs €5 or $5.87 per month. It’s also notably less expensive than Hotspot Shield itself, which costs $12.99 per month.

The average price per month for a PCMag top-rated VPN service is about $10.14. Bitdefender is a little more than half the price of NordVPN and only a dollar or so more than Mullvad. A typical standalone VPN allows use on a specific number of devices, most commonly five. With Bitdefender, you get to use as many devices as you have licenses for the underlying antivirus or suite. The price of the Premium VPN doesn’t change.

Simple User Interface

The Bitdefender VPN is very simple: a slender grey rectangle with a large, blue button to connect the VPN. You change the VPN server from the pull-down menu, although you can only select the country to which you will connect. Other services, like NordVPN, let you select the specific server in a given country, and even tell you what kind of load that server is experiencing. Bitdefender is more of a set-it-and-forget-it affair. That said, it has only a few options. You can turn notifications on or off, configure the VPN to connect automatically on unsafe (read: unsecured) Wi-Fi networks, and have it launch on Windows startup. There’s also a Kill Switch option that cuts off unsecured Internet connectivity if the VPN connection drops.

The stripped-down nature of Bitdefender VPN Premium is understandable when you consider that it’s being sold as an add-on to Bitdefender antivirus products. In fact, you cannot use Bitdefender VPN Premium as a standalone product—it must be installed alongside a Bitdefender antivirus or suite product.

Other VPN services, like TorGuard VPN, have a host of add-on options, like dedicated IP address and access to a 10GB network. NordVPN and ProtonVPN let you connect to the Tor anonymization network through their clients. Several VPN services also offer servers designed for specific activities, like P2P file sharing or Netflix streaming. The Bitdefender VPN doesn’t have these, although it allows file sharing on the networks used by the Bitdefender VPN.

Streaming services such as Netflix don’t get along with VPNs, because a VPN user can spoof device location to get around location-based content limitations. The last time we tested Bitdefender we found that we could not connect to the popular video streaming service while the Bitdefender VPN was active. This time we had no trouble viewing The Umbrella Academy even when connected through a server in Brazil. Netflix is very active about blocking VPNs, but VPNs are active in trying to keep their customers streaming happily. It’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse game.

None of the documentation we found on the Bitdefender VPN outlined how many servers are available, but we’ve been told it’s the same as those available with the first-party Hotspot Shield client. Hotspot Shield has 1,800 servers in about 80 countries. That’s a strong showing, beating out much of the VPN small fry.

Server locations matter, partly because more locations means more options for spoofing your own location, but mostly because a closer server will usually yield better speed and lower latency. CyberGhost, for example, is available in 90 countries, and ExpressVPN covers an impressive 94 countries.

You won’t find an option to change the protocol used by the Bitdefender VPN client to create its encrypted tunnel. That’s because Bitdefender always uses the OpenVPN protocol. That’s good. We prefer OpenVPN, which has the advantage of being open-source and picked over for potential vulnerabilities. WireGuard is a new VPN technology and the open-source heir apparent to OpenVPN. A few VPNs have moved over to WireGuard, and we expect many more to follow next year.

Average Impact on Connection Speeds

A major concern with using a VPN is it impact on your internet connection speeds. Using the Ookla speed test tool, we find a percent change between speed test results with the VPN and without the VPN. (Note: Ookla is owned by j2 Global, the parent company of PCMag’s publisher, Ziff Davis.) Our testing was carried out early this year in our New York office. That office is not currently accessible, so we can’t make a direct comparison with Bitdefender’s results. But given that Bitdefender uses Hotspot Shield’s infrastructure, it’s reasonable to guess it would test about the same. In any case, your results will differ depending on your location and connection.

As you can see in the chart below, Hotspot Shield did extremely well in our speed tests. It put the least drag on download speed of any recent product, and also increased latency by the least amount. Surfshark VPN beat out all comers with its near-nonexistent drag on upload speed, but Hotspot Shield’s effect on uploads is well below the median.

It’s important to remember that variations in network traffic can affect speed test results. The fastest VPN today may not be fastest tomorrow; the fastest VPN in New York may not be the fastest VPN in Portland. These comparisons can give an idea of which VPN will put the least friction into your connection, but we don’t recommend choosing a VPN on speed alone.

If you’re already paying for Bitdefender and are looking for a no-frills VPN service at a bargain basement price, Bitdefender VPN Premium fits the bill. If you’re looking for more features, such as Tor-over-VPN, multi-hop connections, and so on, we recommend looking at ProtonVPN. Mullvad is slightly cheaper, and TunnelBear VPN significantly friendlier. All three of these products have received the coveted PCMag Editors’ Choice award for their individual excellence.

You might also consider Norton 360 Deluxe if you want powerful security that includes VPN protection. At $99.99 per year for five licenses, it looks more expensive than Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, which charges $69.99 for the same number. However, with Norton you get a full-featured VPN at no extra charge. Norton is a full security suite, with firewall, parental control, hosted storage for your online backups, and more.

Safepay for Online Safety

Online security is important even when you’re just watching the news or posting pet pictures, but it’s critical when you log in to a financial website. Bitdefender’s Safepay automatically offers protection when it detects that you’re about to connect with a banking site or other sensitive site. You can tell it to always use Safepay on the site in question, or never use it for that site.

Safepay is a desktop all its own, with a hardened browser built in. Processes running in the Safepay desktop have no connection with the regular desktop. The Safepay browser supports Wallet, naturally, and you can install Flash if required, but other extensions aren’t welcome. Kaspersky’s Bank Mode works in much the same way, though it doesn’t open a separate desktop.

The Safepay browser’s process isolation should protect against any software keylogger or other keystroke-stealing spyware. Going beyond that, a virtual keyboard serves to defeat even hardware keyloggers. It also prevents programs from snapping screenshots to capture sensitive information. You can optionally configure Bitdefender to activate the VPN any time SafePay is in use, for enhanced protection.

We tested Safepay by trying to log into a dozen financial sites, some big, some small. It shepherded most of them to the protective shield of SafePay. However, it did not offer SafePay for payment sites such as PayPal, VenMo, and Zelle. Of course, you’re free to open the SafePay browser and navigate to whatever site you want secured. And if you no longer want to automatically open a domain in SafePay, you can just open settings and remove it.

Even More Features

The list of features packed into this antivirus just goes on and on. The vulnerability scan feature automatically runs in the background and warns you about missing Windows security updates, missing security patches for popular apps, and weak Windows account passwords. The related Wi-Fi Security Advisor warns about any security problems with your home, office, or public Wi-Fi hotspots, advising that you use the VPN as necessary.

One great way to protect your most sensitive documents is to encrypt them. After encryption, its essential to securely delete the unsecured original, to avoid even forensic recovery. Bitdefender reserves file encryption technology for its security suite products, but the secure deletion File Shredder is present even in the antivirus. Use it when you really need to eliminate a sensitive file so that nobody, not even the NSA, can recover it.

Sometimes you run into malware so ornery and persistent that even Bitdefender can’t remove it. The typical solution in a case like this is to burn a bootable rescue disc, one that runs a non-Windows operating system. Bitdefender does better with its Rescue Environment. You don’t have to burn a disc; you just select Rescue Environment and reboot. Windows malware can’t defend itself when Windows isn’t running.

Bitdefender has long included configuration profiles for different types of activity. For example, the Work profile boosts email protection and system performance, while the Movie profile suppresses notifications and limits background activity. The current edition brings this feature to prominence, popping up a reminder that enabling it can optimize your experience.

A Top Antivirus Choice

Bitdefender Antivirus Plus offers excellent malware protection, as shown by its superb scores from many independent testing labs. Our own tests show it to be especially effective against web-based threats, including malware-hosting sites and phishing pages. For extra defense against ransomware, it watches for ransomware-like behavior and restores any files encrypted before behavior-based detection kicked in. On top of that, it piles on enough features that it could qualify as a security suite. It’s truly an excellent choice, and an Editors’ Choice.

In the packed field of antivirus utilities, we’ve named several other Editors’ Choice products. The labs love Kaspersky Anti-Virus just as much as they do Bitdefender. McAfee AntiVirus Plus doesn’t score as high, but it offers unlimited protection for your Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS devices. And tiny Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus uses a journal-and-rollback system that should undo the effects of any malware that gets past its initial detection, even ransomware.

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Further Reading