Is acronis active protection service redundant? Re: Disable In Services??
It says:
Q: What is Acronis Active Protection?
A: Acronis Active Protection is an anti-ransomware technology developed by Acronis to bring peace of mind to its users, in addition to its world's leading backup, data protection and disaster recovery technologies.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/60452
My AV Internet Security Software (Bitdefender) does this. Any harm in disabling acronis active protection service in component services. It uses quite a bit of memory (relatively speaking) and for no other reason that bothers me. On a related matter does acronis active protection service play nice with other apps that do the same thing such as Bitdefender. I'm wondering if I should disable acronis active protection service for that reason alone. TIA.
I ditto Steve's remarks. AAP saved me from a drive by ransomware attack a short time ago, sure glad I had it active!
I have been running active protection plus my preferred security software since active protection first became available. Even in the early days they played nicely together. Even on my ancient i7-3770K based system there is no noticeable performance impact (helped by SSD system disk).
Ian
Dan's question: Is acronis active protection service redundant?
I believe that it is not redundant. It adds an additional layer of protection.
I have done some research on Bitdefender and cannot find any information on exactly how it works WRT ransomware. Your last line of defense are the .tib files. Acronis Active Protection keeps the .tib files from being deleted or corrupted. Does Bitdefender protect files from being deleted or corrupted? If not, then you should consider keeping AAP turned on.
In addition to file protection, AAP also detects ransomware patterns, such as programs accessing the windows registry and/or creating encrypted files....and takes action (stops the process) if it detects a pattern.
To me, AAP is worth keeping on.
>I have done some research on Bitdefender and cannot find any information on exactly how it works WRT ransomware.
Perhaps I should have been more specific about what version/ type of Bitdefender I am using. bitdefender total security 2018. A cursory google search came up with the link below. I believe I read that 2018 also protects against ransom ware. Currently Task Manager shows Bitdefender Security Service using close to 500MB of RAM and Acronis Active Protection Service using 200MB of RAM. I have 16GB installed so it was never a concern about whether one of the products was using too much RAM but rather (I'm old school) an optics thing for me. If the Acronis app was redundant I was just going to disable it but for the time being I am going to leave well enough alone.
How ransomware protection works in Bitdefender 2017
https://www.bitdefender.com/support/how-ransomware-protection-works-in-bitdefender-2017-1733.html
Dan,
Thanks for the link... It appears to me that bitdefender is a capable anti virus & anti ransomware program. Here's some vulnerabilities that I would note:
Bitdefender does protect folders (and files in those folders). However, it allows digitally signed programs and programs that are not digitally signed but white listed access to modify files within the folders. My understanding is that some ransomware programs actually hijack other programs to hide what they are doing. For example to delete files, the ransomware program hijacks windows explorer in silent mode, then windows explorer does the delete. I believe that Bitdefender would not prevent the file deletion, where AAP would pop-up a warning and prevent the delete. ATI also had built in protection against being hijacked.
If Bitdefender and AAP are not interfering with each other, then I believe you have made the right decision to leave AAP on.
I would add that the big advantage AAP has over BitDefender is the ability to recover effected files from a ransomware attack. I have had an experience with this recently and thanks to AAP was able to recover 11 effected files from a ransomware attack. I know of no other Security product able to do that however, other backup products, now offering ransomware protection, may do so.
Do not run Acronis Active Protection and Bitdefender Ransomware Remediation at the same time, since they will conflict. I actually prefer Acronis Active Protection over Bitdefender Ransomware Remediation. However, as of 2020-06-19, Acronis True Image 2019 has a conflict with Bitdefender Total Security 2020 (on Microsoft Windows 10). Bitdefender Services would not run at all after the most recent Bitdefender software update if Acronis Active Protection was enabled, so I have disabled Acronis Active Protection and switched back to Bitdefender Ransomware Remediation. I just upgraded to the free 30-day trial of Acronis True Image 2020, but haven't tried running Active Protection yet since I had the conflict with ATI 2019.
See the following documents for detailed information on AAP.
KB 60452: Acronis Active Protection: Frequently Asked Questions
KB 60193: Acronis True Image 2018 and 2019: Active Protection blocks legitimate applications
KB 60173: Acronis True Image 2018 and 2019: troubleshooting issues with Acronis Active Protection
Also the following KB documents
KB 46430: Acronis Software: Making Acronis Products Compatible with Antivirus Software
Nicole Sharp wrote:Do not run Acronis Active Protection and Bitdefender Ransomware Remediation at the same time, since they will conflict. I actually prefer Acronis Active Protection over Bitdefender Ransomware Remediation. However, as of 2020-06-19, Acronis True Image 2019 has a conflict with Bitdefender Total Security 2020 (on Microsoft Windows 10). Bitdefender Services would not run at all after the most recent Bitdefender software update if Acronis Active Protection was enabled, so I have disabled Acronis Active Protection and switched back to Bitdefender Ransomware Remediation. I just upgraded to the free 30-day trial of Acronis True Image 2020, but haven't tried running Active Protection yet since I had the conflict with ATI 2019.
Thanks for replying though I must say that I was surprised to see a new post to my original almost 2.5 year old thread. I currently have TI 2019 installed as well as Bitdefender Total Security 2020 Build 24.0.24.131 and Ransomware is ticked and I have not encountered a "major" conflict. Do you have a reference for this conflict? Perhaps Steve cites it in his following post but I did not have the time to go through his links. The reason that I put major in quotes is that my only problem with Bitdefender that started in the last month or so is that while I have under Protection->Antivirus->Settings->Drives and Devices "Ask Every Time" ticked when I insert a flash drive that option no longer works. I suppose I could untick Ransomware to see if that makes a difference but I am not there yet. Did you put in a ticket and has Bitdefender or Acronis confirmed the conflict? TIA.
There have be few if any reports of conflicts. I have run it since ATI 2017, through to 2021 Beta without conflicts with my Norton 360.
There were some recent botched updates to some AV product that caused issues, so that may what prompted the new post. My understanding is that Microsoft has developed protocols which should, if followed, prevent conflicts occuring.
Ian
It was after the most recent Bitdefender update (2020-06-19) that required a system reboot. After rebooting, Bitdefender Services would not run. I tried rebooting multiple times, and waiting hours after booting for Bitdefender Services to run. But as soon as I disabled Acronis Active Protection, then Bitdefender Services would run normally. I already upgraded to ATI 2020, but have not tried running Acronis Active Protection yet. The reason I started using Acronis Active Protection in the first place was because Bitdefender Ransomware Remediation gave me too many false positives. But that was about a year ago, so hopefully Bitdefender has improved their antiransomware since then. But normally I would want to use an antimalware suite for antimalware, and backup software for backups.
If it's related at all to Windows, I am on Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise with delayed updates (Semi-Annual Channel). So I only get noncritical updates after they have been tested as safe by non-Enterprise Windows users (who are forced to get every update). That is supposed to make the system more stable, but it means I may be missing some updates that Windows users not on the Semi-Annual Channel already have.
Thanks for the additional information. The PC I am using at the moment is Windows 10 Enterprise, but without the delay for updates. Normally Active Protection generates a notification when program is blocked - is there anything in the Acronis notifications pane (introduced in ATI 2020) about this happening. Whoops, you do not have Active Protection active so there would be no notification. I understand that the Active Protection data base is regularly updated so the issue may have been resolved by an update. All I can suggest see what happens when you activate Active Protection.
Another possibility is to try the Acronis 2021 Beta, however I would not recommend it as Acronis warn against using the beta on production systems which yours would be classified as given the delayed rollout of windows updates.
Ian
Might not be related to Acronis at all. Just spent a couple of hours talking to Microsoft. They put out some really bad updates recently, but they are working very hard to fix the problem, and they promised it will be patched by the end of the month. They confirmed that the Semi-Annual Channel for Windows 10 Enterprise is supposed to prevent problems like this, but this one must have slipped through somehow. I haven't been able to access half of my applications from the Start menu, and it looks like the System Restore Points were removed. So I can either wait for Microsoft to fix the problem with a future update, try to recover from the last sector-by-sector image backup, or reinstall Windows.
ATI 2021 Beta cannot be run at the same time as another version of ATI. So would only be able to test the Beta in VirtualBox. I would not trust a Beta to make critical backups of my primary system.
This is not good news. Recovery may be the best option; however make a backup beforehand so you can recover any files that have been modified since the backup was made. Hopefully like many of us you have your data on a separate partition.
Please keep us informed on your progress.
Ian
I don't know how it might relate to ATI 2019, but the Start menu issue appears to be primarily cosmetic. Though I think I've seen some other odd hiccups (not counting Bitdefender not loading). All of the applications are still there; they just can't be run from the Start menu. Uninstalling and reinstalling applications brings them back to the Start menu, but a sector-by-sector recovery would actually take less time than uninstalling and reinstalling all of my applications (I have too much installed). However, Windows applications that can't be reinstalled like Command Prompt and PowerShell are also inaccessible from the Start menu (but they can still run). Microsoft said if I just wait long enough, an upcoming Windows Update will bring the applications back to the Start menu. So I can wait before doing a recovery if I want to see if Microsoft can fix the problem first. They said a lot of other people are having the same issue, and they will have it fixed as soon as possible.
Thanks for the update. Hopefully you will regularise the situation one way or another in the near future
Guys yesterday my CPU started running at 100%, which brought my computing to a halt. This began when I would start the compact tool within Family Tree Maker 2019. It would run at around 15% CPU usage as is normal. Then, for no apparent reason, Acronis Active Protection Service would start running at upwards of 25% CPU usage. 100% CPU usage for the total computer would follow. I do not know why. If I used Task Manager's End Task to kill Acronis Active Protection Service, the computer went back to normal operation. This is repeatable and has gone on for two days now. I have lots of computer: a 6 core i7, 12G of ram and an NVME SSD. Any thoughts?
Leroy, welcome to these public User Forums.
If you are confident that the compact tool is valid and trusted, then you should add it to the exclusions for AAP.
See KB 62113: Acronis Active Protection slows down applications without a valid digital signature that modify many files in a short period of time - for more information.
Also KB 60193: Acronis True Image 2018, 2019 and 2020: Active Protection blocks legitimate applications
and KB 60173: Acronis True Image: troubleshooting issues with Acronis Active Protection
Thank you, Steve Smith