The folks at ESET have been busy beavers. Version 4 of NOD32 AntiVirus was our #2 rated antivirus program of 2011. Not a crew to rest on its laurels, their development team has already released NOD32 AntiVirus 5 Beta. Version 5′s mission is simple: play catch-up with other leading antivirus platforms by adding a host of new features.
A Plethora of New Features
We lauded NOD32 Version 4 for its ease of use and its high degree of virus-squashing
accuracy (it scored 14/15 in our Effectiveness rating). While we admired NOD32′s simplicity from a usability standpoint, we did worry that users weren’t getting the most bang for their buck compared to Norton, Avast!, and other commercial AVs. NOD32 Version 5 aims to change all that.
The (slightly) re-designed main Dashboard screen has been renamed Home, and contains a list of frequently used commands.
Some changes will not be immediately visible to new users. Behind the scenes, NOD32 Version 5 uses a cloud-based reputation system to whitelist files that have already been trusted by a significant number of users on the network. NOD32 is a year or two behind the curve on cloud-based reputation: Symantec’s Norton already incorporates reputation-based security. Still, it’s good to see that the idea is catching on among more vendors. As Symantec’s Gerry Egan points out (see previous link), viruses are morphing so quickly that the traditional, signature-based approach to computer security is losing ground.
Other changes are more visible – though not as visible as we like. Somehow, NOD32 4 managed to take second place without supporting one of the most important features in antivirus applications: Gamer Mode. This simple switch suspends scans and antivirus-related popups while you’re playing an online game, watching a movie on Netflix, or performing some other processor-intensive activity. While this feature is most welcome in NOD32, it’s not well implemented in the beta: you can disable Gamer Mode from the context menu in the Windows System Tray, but you can only enable it by navigating to the Setup tab in the NOD32 Dashboard. Hopefully, ESET will add a context menu option for Gamer Mode before release. In better news, NOD32 provides a configuration
option to enable Gamer Mode automatically whenever an application runs full-screen.
NOD32 Version 5 also enhances the breadth of virus scanning by adding support for scanning removable media. Users can even prevent specific devices from connecting to a computer.
New Tools
The Tools tab (previously only available in Advanced mode) has also been greatly
improved. In Version 4, the Tools menu was a text-based listing of four tools. ESET has gussied up this screen, and added several new tools to boot. Protection Statistics provides basic reporting on past scanning activity. The Watch Activity screen displays how many read/write filesystem operations are currently occurring on the system. While the filesystem is the only Watch Activity option currently available, the existence of a drop-down selector on this page implies that ESET will be adding more components to this screen prior to release. Finally, Cloud-Powered Reputation uses ESET’s new cloud-based reputation system to calculate which processes currently running on the system may pose a security threat.
The newly redesigned Tools menu brings a little beauty to this previously drab screen. ESET has also added several new utilities, including Watch Activity and Cloud-Powered Reputation.
User Interface Improvements
The NOD32 beta also introduces a few user interface improvements. Previously, the default Dashboard screen was called Protection Status, and it contained nothing but information about the computer’s security state. The new default screen is called Home, and it contains a list of Frequently Used commands.
NOD32 also appears to have eliminated its distinction between Standard Mode and Advanced Mode. The Advanced Mode option on the Setup menu has been replaced by a link labeled Enter advanced setup, which just opens the Configuration dialog.
Gone is the distinction between Standard and Advanced mode in NOD32 Version 5: all users are now presented with a single interface.
Conclusion
NOD32 Version 5 Beta is a great leap forward for the platform. While none of these features are particularly unique, they do help justify investing in a product which has already proven itself a champion in terms of anti-virus eradication.
I have never needed a ‘gamer mode’ for NOD32. This antivirus is so quick and lightweight it doesn’t really impact games. It’s a stark contrast to Norton (which I believe is a virus, because it affects your system performance in the same way an actual virus does – even after uninstalling it). Furthermore, online games present a very real attack vector for viruses (look at how often Quake 2 was exploited); disabling your AV is probably a poor idea. You can also just filter out game data files if you really see a difference (e.g. *.MPQ for Blizzard games).
The reputation system is a big win, but NOD32 4.0 does have this in a lesser-form (virus net or whatever it’s called); you just need to set it up – the NOD32 huerestics are also pretty good, especially how you can selectively enable/disable it for certain attack vectors (e.g. only external drives, downloads and emails).
Overall I would say that these features are mostly a marketting ploy; when deciding on an AV to use the average user would look at the comparisson matrix. If they want to make sales they need to support these features, but I honestly think it’s good enough without them.