Bullgaurd

BestAntivirusGuide Best Antivirus BullGuard Review – Everything You Need to Know [2022] BullGuard Review – Everything You Need to Know [2022] Octav Fedor (Cybersecurity Editor) Last edit: May 25, 2023 #1 BullGuard Review in 2022 BullGuard is a traditional antivirus product that has always had a consistent user base. That said, its popularity seems to have declined in recent years. Why? I decided to put it to the test to see how it holds up presently. For this BullGuard review, I analyzed the top-tier suite — BullGuard Premium Protection. This analysis will help you make an informed decision when choosing the antivirus solution that’s right for you. Major Features BullGuard includes numerous features designed to keep your PC and online accounts safe and secure. The first feature I analyzed is one of the most important… Ransomware Protection To thoroughly test BullGuard’s antivirus engine, I attempted to run a ransomware simulation using a KnowBe4 Ransomware Simulator. However, BullGuard didn’t allow the main launcher to run. This should be a good sign because it means that BullGuard’s sensors stopped a major threat, even if it’s a ransomware simulator. It blocked the executable that was necessary for the test. Then, after I restored it from quarantine, BullGuard blocked it again after I tried to run the test a second time. Unfortunately, there’s no option to allow the executable to run. The same goes for Bitdefender and McAfee. BullGuard should include this option, especially when it comes to detecting false positives. It only has an option to report false positives to its developers. Scan Manual and automatic system scans are key practices to protect devices from cyber threats. BullGuard’s scanning options are quite customizable and will satisfy even the most security-focused users. As with all BullGuard modules, you can conveniently select related features using the drop-down menu. Within the antivirus module, you’ll see multiple options: While testing the scan thoroughly, some interesting things surfaced: Full scan BullGuard’s full scan targets all files and processes located on the hard drive. As usual, the more files your system has, the slower the scanning process will be. Scanning time also depends on your PC’s performance and how you configure the scan, including the number of file threads that need to be scanned. BullGuard took just 12 minutes to scan roughly 800k files. That’s incredibly fast for a deep malware scan. In fact, it was so fast that I was a bit concerned that the scan wasn’t deep enough. To view the scan report, I clicked on a link (BullGuard creates one after each scan) — “View Report”. This took me to the messaging center (log), where I could view the results and scan parameters in more detail. Quick scan The quick scan feature only targets files that are common hosts of viruses or other forms of malware. Scanned files included rootkits, registry, processes, as well as temporary files. On my test PC, the quick scan process was quick indeed! It took only 10 seconds to scan over 2000 files. As I expected, this scan didn’t detect any threats. Custom scan Things got more interesting with the custom scan module. It allows you to schedule scans by creating antivirus profiles. Naturally, the option you can control is what files to scan: …how to scan them: …and when: During my BullGuard review, I noticed something strange about the automatic scans. As soon as I configured a custom automatic scan, the solution performed a scan once every few minutes, even though I didn’t set a scanning interval. Maybe they’ll fix that in a future update. Safe Browsing The safe browsing feature protects you from phishing attempts and malicious websites. It’s a mixture between the secure browser feature (more on that later) and the parental controls. What it does is twofold: it detects suspicious links in search engine result pages and it also blocks websites. If you enable safe browsing, you’ll see varios icons next to links in search engine results (Google, Bing, Yahoo, or Facebook) in accordance to their threat level. No threat = green icon and high threat = red icon. When I searched “malicious website test” on Google using Chrome, BullGuard correctly marked it as a dangerous website: It’s worth noting that BullGuard won’t install extensions on your browser. I see this as a big plus as you don’t have to worry about updating any extensions. The other option within this module is website blocking; you can access this from the settings page. Every time I attempted to access a blacklisted site, a message popped up stating that the page was blocked. I proceeded with other tests — opening malicious test links from different sources. I opened these links on my testing PC with multiple browsers. Maliciouswebsitetest.com — BullGuard prevented all browsers from accessing this website. We’re off to a good start! Wicar.org’s Malware Tests — Testing BullGuards’ defenses using these malware tests was not as straightforward as I hoped. The links from this page were blocked either by the browser’s built-in safety features, or by my router. But did BullGuard try to block them, too? I looked over BullGuard’s logs for any mention of these pages but couldn’t find any obvious traces. Still, this is a well-known malware test page; I’m sure that BullGuard can block them, even though I saw no proof of that (initially). In another test, I decided to swap the Wi-Fi connection with a hotspot from my phone. This time, when the internet source was different, BullGuard showed that it did in fact block those threats in the Opera browser. The other browsers used their built-in defenses, but it’s safe to assume that BullGuard protects all browsers from threats, even though it may not be apparent.   Firewall A firewall is an essential feature on any PC. They stop potential threats and attacks dead in their tracks throughout your entire network. BullGuard’s firewall replaces default firewalls, taking control of everything that passes through your network. The firewall module lists all kinds of details about the apps and services that your network allows. For starters, you can manage