Antivirus protection for your devices is essential, but for wide-ranging protection, you want a full security suite. Most suites include a two-way firewall and many add spam filtering, parental control, or backup. Vipre Advanced Security gives you antivirus, firewall, and spam filtering, as well as some useful bonus features. It beats many competitors on price and its firewall has improved from previous iterations, but it doesn't score well in antivirus tests this time around. Bitdefender Internet Security costs a little more, but it consistently tops lab test scores, and offers a huge collection of security features. Or if price isn't a consideration, spring for the excellent Norton 360 Deluxe. Both earn our Editors’ Choice award.
(Editors' Note: Vipre is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.)
How Much Does Vipre Advanced Security Cost?
Vipre offers a single security suite license for $60.49 per year or $82.49 for five licenses. Want more? You can get 10 licenses for $109.99. Note that you can use your Vipre licenses on both Windows and macOS devices.
Many security suites skip the single-device license, starting with a three-pack or five-pack. A single license for Bitdefender, ESET, F-Secure Internet Security, or ZoneAlarm costs just under $60, which is slightly less than Vipre's suite. At the five-license tier, Bitdefender and ESET cost $89.95, more than Vipre’s $82.49, but ZoneAlarm only charges $69.95 for a five-pack. Norton looks decidedly expensive at $104.95, but note that this gets you five suite licenses, five VPN licenses, and 50GB of storage for your backups.
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It's Surprisingly Easy to Be More Secure Online
If you need 10 licenses, the prices shuffle again. Avast, AVG, Kaspersky, and Total Defense cost $10 less than Vipre, and Bitdefender is $15 less. On the other hand, ESET, Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security, and ZoneAlarm cost $20 more than Vipre. You pay $139.99 per year for McAfee+, but that subscription covers every Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and ChromeOS device in your household.
Features Shared With Vipre Antivirus
When you launch Vipre's installer, it starts by asking for the product key. Once you click the button to agree with the license agreement, Vipre handles the rest of the installation. It checks for the latest program version and antivirus definitions automatically, then it runs a quick scan for active malware.
This suite contains all the malware-fighting tools found in the standalone Vipre Antivirus Plus, Please read that review for a detailed breakdown of how those features performed. I'll summarize my findings here.
Like Vipre's standalone antivirus, the suite’s main window has three tabs: MyVipre, Account, and Manage. A large panel on the MyVipre page offers a simple report on antivirus scans and update statistics; the suite adds Firewall status. Simple buttons let you launch or schedule scans. The Manage tab holds the settings for the various security components. If you don't like the color scheme, which defaults to green and white on dark gray, you can change it on the Account tab. There are six more color themes to choose from, three with a light background, and three with a dark one.
I follow four independent antivirus testing labs; Vipre appears in the current results from just one of them. For several years it has scored high enough with AV-Test Institute to receive the rating Top Product. However, Vipre didn’t participate in this lab’s latest test. Of the participating apps, over 60% reach Top Product status, meaning they score either a perfect 18 points or a half-point less.
Austrian lab AV-Comparatives certifies antivirus apps at the Standard level if they pass a test’s minimum requirements, and at the Advanced or Advanced+ levels if they go beyond merely passing. In the three tests I follow, Vipre receives one Advanced+ certification and two Advanced. That’s good, but Avast, AVG Internet Security, and Bitdefender take Advanced+ in all three of the tests.
My aggregate lab score algorithm requires at least two scores as input. With just one, Vipre doesn’t reach that bar. Bitdefender tops all the rest, with a perfect 10 points based on top scores from all four labs. AVG also holds a 10-point aggregate, but this score is based on just two lab scores.
On a standard clean test system, Vipre took close to three hours to complete a full test scan—quite a bit slower than the current average of two hours. Its RapidScan technology, which optimizes the process by identifying programs that don’t need another look, helped it finish a subsequent scan in 21 minutes. RapidScan is enabled by default for on-demand scans, but not for scheduled scans. I advise turning it on for the scheduled weekly full scan and daily quick scan. Fast or slow, I always advise running a full scan after installing any suite or antivirus.
In my hands-on malware protection testing, Vipre scores 7.5 of 10 possible points, the lowest score with my current collection of malware. Bitdefender Internet Security matches that same low score, but its impressive lab test results overshadow that result. Webroot has the best score of apps tested with my current samples, scoring 9.4 points.
Challenged to prevent malware downloading from a collection of URLs recently discovered by the experts at MRG-Effitas, Vipre scores just 58%, a big drop from its previous score of 97%, and one of the lowest scores I’ve recorded in this test. McAfee, Norton, and several others score 100% in MRG-Effitas' malicious URL defense tests.
Unfortunately, that poor detection of dangerous URLs carried over to the phishing protection test. Vipre missed nearly two-thirds of the verified frauds—among the lowest scores for this test. Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all beat its detection rate by more than 50 percentage points. Avast, Trend Micro Internet Security, and ZoneAlarm detect 100% of phishing frauds in their own most recent tests.
The antivirus includes a handy secure deletion tool. If you use it to erase sensitive files, nobody but a forensic expert can recover them. There’s no option to use multiple overwrite passes before deletion, but unless you’re hiding secrets from the NSA, that shouldn’t be an issue.
Basic Antivirus for macOS
You can use your Advanced Security licenses to install protection either on Windows or macOS. However, what you get on the Mac isn't a suite, but a simple antivirus. Vipre Advanced Security for Mac lacks the protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites found in Vipre's standalone Windows antivirus.
Briefly, the Mac edition has an unusual and attractive user interface, with few controls. You can run a quick, full, or custom scan; or you can just rely on its real-time protection. It doesn't attempt to keep the browser safe from malicious or fraudulent websites and doesn't include any features beyond basic antivirus protection. Please read my review for the full story.
Tune Vipre's Firewall for Maximum Protection
Vipre offers a full set of firewall-related features, but many of them are turned off by default. If you want full firewall protection, click Manage, click Firewall, and turn on Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Process Protection. As I learned in previous evaluations, just turning on the IDS only protects against High Priority intrusions. For testing, I configured it to protect against Medium and Low Priority intrusions as well. I set all three, along with Process Protection, to both block intrusions and notify me of their actions.
The built-in Windows Firewall helps defend your PC against outside attack by putting all the ports in stealth mode, which means they’re not just closed, they’re invisible from the outside. Vipre’s firewall doesn’t do this unless you actively check the box for Stealth Mode. If you let Vipre take the place of the built-in firewall without checking that box, you’re getting reduced protection.
The other main task of a personal firewall is managing how programs access the network and internet, to prevent misuse. Vipre defines permissions for its own processes and a few essential Windows processes. For others, it allows all outbound traffic and blocks all unsolicited inbound traffic. This arrangement avoids the annoying firewall pop-up queries that plague users of some firewall utilities, but it also means the firewall doesn’t actively control network permissions for individual programs.
To see the Vipre firewall’s program control in action, I switched it from Standard to Learning mode. In this mode, it pops up a query asking how to handle each program for which it doesn’t already have a rule.
Testing with a tiny browser I wrote myself, I found that the firewall pop-up gives the user buttons to Block or Allow the connection, with a checkbox to make decisions into rules. Clicking for more info got me a ton more information, more than the average user could digest. That’s typical of old-school firewalls. I found that the firewall also pops up a query for every browser and a few system processes. Switching to Learning mode does enable full-scale program control, but you'll go through a pop-up storm until you get rules defined for all your usual programs. Vipre’s explanatory tooltips advise against leaving Learning mode turned on.
ZoneAlarm Extreme Security also uses pop-up queries for unknown programs, but as its database of known programs is immense, it rarely needs to ask. Norton handles all such decisions internally, putting unknowns under heightened monitoring and springing into action if it detects they are misusing the network. Both solutions offer more sophisticated protection than Vipre.
Given the description of Intrusion Detection and the Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS), you might expect them to protect against exploit attacks. However, when I hit the test system with 30 exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration testing tool, I got no reaction from the HIPS or IDS components. I verified this by checking the logs for both.
On the plus side, Vipre’s real-time protection caught 55% of my test attacks, identifying well over half of them using their official CVE numbers. That’s the best detection rate of any recent suite, and it does its work at the network level, preventing any downloading of detected exploit payloads. Bitdefender and G Data also score over 50%. Norton 360 Deluxe used to routinely score 90% or better, but its latest run detected only 37% of the exploits.
I tried attacking Vipre directly using techniques a malicious program could manage. I found no way to flip a Firewall Off switch in the Registry, so I tried killing its four visible processes using Task Manager. All but the essential antivirus engine succumbed, including the user interface. I verified that antivirus protection still actively eliminated malware even though it couldn’t pop up notifications about its activities. Still, I'd like to see Vipre protect all its processes, the way Bitdefender, Norton, and quite a few others do.
When I last tested Vipre, I managed to completely disable it in a way that a malicious program might (assuming none of Vipre's protective layers quarantined it). Since that time, Vipre has toughened its defenses. I couldn’t make the necessary changes to the behavior of its essential Windows services.
This firewall protects its essential processes and services from termination, though its user interface remains vulnerable. It puts all your PC’s ports in stealth mode, but only if you remember to turn on that feature. Full application control is also available for those who want to dig in and change defaults. While its HIPS and IDS components at full power didn't block exploits in my testing, its regular real-time protection detected and deflected more exploits than any other recent suite. Vipre's firewall component has improved.
Simple Antispam
When was the last time you got a missive from a Nigerian prince in your Inbox? Years ago? Chances are good your email provider filters out those and other unwanted spam messages. If you're one of those rare individuals who needs a local spam filter, Vipre does the job with no fuss. It also scans both incoming and outgoing email traffic for malware and phishing.
To manage the antispam component, click Manage in the main window and select Email from the choices at the left. Out of the box, the spam filter integrates invisibly with Outlook, diverting spam into the correct folder. There's no toolbar, nor are there any buttons to mark misfiled valid mail or missed spam. If you use a different email client, you must check a box under Email Protection and confirm the ports used for POP3 and SMTP traffic. Within the email client, you’ll define a message rule to divert messages marked as spam into their own folder.
I'm a fan of simplicity. I don't admire the fact that ZoneAlarm's spam filter comes burdened with seven pages of configuration settings. Vipre's spam filter takes the cake when it comes to simplicity. You can turn it on or off. You can whitelist or blacklist email addresses. And that's it. The program takes care of the rest.
Auto-Patch for Vulnerabilities
Have you noticed how often many software publishers release security updates? There’s a good reason for that. When nefarious researchers discover a security hole in an app, all users are vulnerable until the app’s publisher releases a patch. Even then, you’re vulnerable until you apply the patch. Vipre's Auto-Patch feature aims to keep your essential apps up to date, and you don't have to do a thing. By default, it runs a scan every other day and quietly applies any patches it finds.
This feature involves updating programs, so it makes sense that you find it in the Updates section under Manage. Here you can change the frequency that it checks for patches or tell it to get your permission before installing updates. You can also launch an on-demand scan for apps that need patches.
Unlike many vulnerability scans, this one doesn't boast about its accomplishments. To see what it did, you must open Update History and click the Patches page. The programs it checks include popular browsers, browser extensions, and utilities, as well as Zoom and some other full-scale applications. On my sparsely populated test system, it found and installed updates for Firefox and VMWare Tools.
Gaming Mode
New since my last review, Vipre’s Gaming Mode aims to enhance your gaming experience by refraining from any activities that might spike system resource usage. You don’t want to get fragged just because your antivirus decided to check for updates, right? By default, it postpones system scans, update checks, and system updates. It also disables notifications from the antivirus and firewall.
Many security tools that offer a similar feature automatically engage it when you launch any full-screen process. With Vipre, you do it manually. You can open the app, click Manage, select Gaming from the list on the left, and flip the switch to turn it on. Or you can right-click the tray icon and select Enable Gaming. Either way, you specify the duration of Gaming Mode, from one to eight hours. Of course, you can turn it off manually at any time.
A Minor Performance Hit
These days, I rarely encounter a security suite that has a severe impact on system performance. Security companies know that users will just turn off a suite that seems to put a drag on their activities. I still perform a few hands-on tests, however, to identify the rare suites that do have a noticeable impact. Thankfully, Vipre isn't one of those.
Getting security components loaded when Window starts can affect boot time, so I run a script that measures the time from the start of the boot process until the system is ready for use. Averaging many runs before and after installing the security suite, I measure the suite's impact. As occasionally happens, I found that the boot time averaged faster after I installed Vipre. According to my testing, It doesn’t slow things down at all.
Real-time antivirus monitoring has the potential to slow down ordinary file operations. To check on this, I run a script that moves and copies an eclectic collection of files between drives. Averaging many runs before and after installing Vipre, I found the script took 6% longer, a small impact. Another script repeatedly zips and unzips the same file collection; the time to complete that one increased by just 1%.
Vipre's three performance scores average out to a 2% slowdown. You're not likely to notice this. Others have technically done even better. K7 and Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus have no measurable impact on any of the three tests, while Avira and ESET have such a minor impact that their scores average 0%.
Room for Improvement
Vipre Advanced Security's core antivirus protection scores have dropped since our last review. The firewall, on the other hand, has improved, with better hardening of its processes and the top score in a test of exploit protection. You do still have to change the default settings to get full firewall protection, though. The macOS edition has an excellent user interface, but under that façade, it offers the bare minimum of antivirus features.
We have two top picks among security suites: Bitdefender Internet Security’s pricing isn’t very different from Vipre’s, but Bitdefender offers many more features. In addition, it currently holds perfect scores from four antivirus labs. Norton 360 Deluxe costs decidedly more, but your subscription gets you a full-featured cross-platform suite, a VPN with no bandwidth limits, and 50GB of storage for your backups.
Vipre Advanced Security offers most expected suite features at a slightly lower price than many competitors, and its firewall has improved since we last tested. Its antivirus test scores, however, have dropped significantly.
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