CIS versus Avast4

Dear Avast,

I use Avast4 for a long time because of the build in security like,

  • Anti-spyware built-in
  • Anti-rootkit built-in
  • Strong self-protection
  • Antivirus kernel
  • Resident protection
  • P2P and IM Shields
  • Network Shield
  • Web Shield
  • Integrated Virus Cleaner

Now I wonder if I scould change to CIS, does CIS have the same or better protection?

I think CIS is better than avast, because the philosophy is other. With the defense+ - that is an operating system firewall - you are available control all unwanted activities. You can recognize all unknown malware.

Yes, i think you should change to CIS completely.

Andreas

avast! simulate multi-layer protection using various modules that can be simplify by one realtime scan that scans all files (like CIS). avast! self protection isn’t good enough and Defense+ paradigm is better because it’s signatures independent and more effective in unknown threats prevention. Change to CIS! :■■■■

Why not CIS (just firewall with D+) and avast!?

Well, CIS doesn’t have the detections that avast! has yet.

Avast! can’t compete (If used in the right hands) with Defense+. Also the resource usage is extremely light.

just my opinion.

Hi All,

I too have used avast! for a number of years in conjunction with CFP. It was a wonderful combination. I am, however, a believer in the Comodo philosophy and today (reluctantly) removed avast! from my system and installed the full CIS package.

Having said all that, I would like to play devil’s advocate here for a second. There is one feature in avast! that I don’t believe is duplicated by Comodo and which gave me the most pause when I considered moving away from avast!. avast! creates a database of important executables and system files through scans of the computer on an ongoing basis. If an infection ever occurs and it is not possible to remove the virus without deleting the file, it may still be possible to recover the file from that database of executables.

I’d be curious to hear what the experts have to say about this point.

Dave (R)

Same here. HIPS is the future.
I still miss some Avast 4 features like boot time scan but i know we’ll see them in the future in CIS.
(L)

We must be remembered that CIS is a child, it have three weeks old.

Comodo R&D department is the best. Trust in those guys and will be surprise. CAVS have the fastest growth detections database @ this moment and CFP and D+ are the best of breed prevention twins (R)

Yes, do remember that today avast! has superior conventional virus detection, and that the heuristics have not been added to CAVS yet. Using avast! and CIS D+ should give at least a preview of what part of CAVS might eventuallly look like. BTW, do you understand that D+ does not do any virus detection? It just tells you things like an unknown program wants to execute another unknown program, sometimes provides some preliminary evaluation of the activity, and leaves it up to you whether you want to allow it or not. You are the virus detector. A difference: If you get an email advertising a video of Paris Hilton, Sarah Palin, and Cheetah the chimp and decide to download it, a conventional virus detector will tell you not to do it if it is in their database. With D+, you will get a bunch of popups that make no judgment on whether you want to allow it or not, just tells you what is happening. Can you tell from the popups that something is a virus, especially if you have started some action? And resist selecting installation mode? Looking for the heuristics eventually in CAVS to help with this major problem, but have no idea today.

I just did a scan with CIS. The first. I was surprised. With avast! it generally took 45 minutes to scan the hard drive without scanning archive files. With CIS it took 1 hour and 29 minutes. Same drive and no archives. The other annoying thing was that with avast! it was easy to continue working. Like writing a document. With CIS I got annoying delays while typing where letters wouldn’t appear immediately. I have a dual core system with 2GB of RAM. Is this to be expected – long scan times and heavy resource utilization?

Dave

Only thing avast! has over CIS is the boot scanner. CAVS scanner is also a lot better than avast!, because its faster and uses less resources. But avast! has the better detection rates, but if you use Defense+ properly you should stay clean.

The features combined in CIS offer better protection and is superior to avast! in my opinion.

If you read the previous message you will see that my experience is in direct contradiction with your claims of less use of resources and a faster scanner.

Dave

Maybe Comodo dev guys are preparing good news about CAVS engine optimizations. Stay with Comodo! (CWY)

I’m not going anywhere. That’s why I am so interested! (:AGL)

Dave

You will see improvements like integration of BoClean and updated heuristics…

Xan

Has signatures for the awful Antivirus 2008, 2009 and variants of it that are infecting many people’s PC’s already been added to CAV? Avast is supposed to have added some signatures for it and so has Avira, but I rather use the AV Component in CIS. Also if I do install the AV Component, does anyone think using DriveSentry or a-squared Anti-Malware along with CIS for a month or two while more signatures are added is a good idea? Both are suppose to work with other AV’s and should run ok with CIS. Thanks.

That xp 2010* viruses are done very well… I can see why the average person can get fooled by it. Looks very convincing.

I do know that DriveSentry works fine beside CIS, Not sure about A-Squared.

Dkeat,

I had the same Avast/CPF combination as you did and also got the same results switching to CIS. Avast was much faster than CIS on both scheduled scan and “right mouse” scan (On demand scan of files/folders) and I could also do other work without being affected as much as with CIS.

From the few tests that I did, I concluded that for the moment (this may change in the future), CIS uses a lot less system resources than Avast while idling ( ~ 6MB RAM/low CPU) but it affects “active” programs (typing, browsing, photoshoping, etc) much more than Avast, even though Avast initially uses much more system resources (~55MB idle/160MB peak) than CIS.

I’m just speculating here but it wouldn’t surprise me that one of the tradeoffs CIS makes in order to be light on resources is to not load in active memory (RAM) all the virus/spyware signatures while the computer is at idle, and only load them when they are actually needed (such as opening a file, etc) but this has the side-effect of slowing down the system while working on active applications, this compared with Avast which probably loads “everything” in memory for instant access. This could partially explain the difference in performance behavior between CIS and Avast. Of course there are a lot of other factors involved.

Chuck

Sounds like sound logic to me Chuck. Thanks for your post.

Dave

I’m just wondering,

@ the guys complaining about slow scan speeds.

Do you have alot of Music files?