Active Protection vs. commercial anti-virus software?

Bert, I would expect that Enchantech may be able to point you towards reviews of Acronis Cyber Protection and any associated test results.  Under the covers Acronis are using BitDefender technology for the antivirus features, so users could expect to see very similar reviews / results as those for the commercial BitDefender products sold in their own name.

Active Protection is primarily intended to protect Acronis backup files and the application by recognising ransomware type malware activity though by integrating this with Cyber Protection this may have expanded the reach of this feature?

From a personal perspective, I have happily been running all my Windows 10 systems with just the integrated Microsoft Windows Defender and Firewall protections.  I had AAP enabled in ATI 2020, 2019 & 2018 when that was the only extra feature but do not use any of the new Cyber Protection features of ATI 2021 or ACPHO, which I have 'turned off permanently' by choice in favour of keeping with Defender and the integrated protection this gives in Windows.

For context, I have not had any malware, ransomware infection on any of my systems!  I am not denying that such threats are becoming more prevalent and I am not complacent about them!  I endeavour to practise a safe computing approach in never clicking links in emails, opening attachments, visiting unsafe websites etc.  I use sandbox technology, have comprehensive backups, use multiple firewalls within my network etc.

Steve,

Thanks for the insight. What you're seeing here is a case of "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" and I'm a pretty old dog.

I've never had any infection of any sort on any of my machines, but I got locked into the idea of requiring a stand-alone A/V product decades ago when my employer required anyone who wanted to connect to the corporate network from home to install the corporate standard A/V software. Even after I retired and then when Windows 10 came along I stuck with stand-alone A/Vs.

Of late though, I'm seeing that Windows' own tools are more than adequate, not as intrusive and already priced into the OS. The Acronis protection features now look like icing on the cake and I'm already about to uninstall the Kaspersky product from one of my PCs.

Getting input from someone with another viewpoint is always valuable, so thanks!

Bert, understand about the corporate requirement, had the same myself when at IBM but lost that when I retired and switched at that time to using Comodo Internet Security with Windows 7 as Defender (Microsoft Security Essentials at that time) wasn't as robust as it is today.  CIS was a free solution that worked just fine for my then needs but wasn't needed with Windows 10.
(IBM were using Norton / Symantec back then which could be a real pain at times!).

The good thing about being retired is having no need to connect to any intranets or corporate networks etc and not being stuck with corporate decisions about what software to use!

Steve,

I turned "Active Protection" back on to look at some of the features and actually read the fine print.

Down at the bottom of the Overview, I see this message:

"Currently the Anti-malware protection is performed by the following software: Kaspersky Anti-Virus. To avoid compatibility issues and to enable complete protection of your system with Cyber Protect Home Office, uninstall the software and enable protection."

It certainly looks like Acronis believes that their product is an effective complete replacement for currently available AV products.

On the other hand, I've planning to pull the plug on both Kaspersky and Active Protection and turn the chore over to Microsoft. It looks like removing Kaspersky's AV product is something of a chore.

Bert wrote:

 

Down at the bottom of the Overview, I see this message:

"Currently the Anti-malware protection is performed by the following software: Kaspersky Anti-Virus. To avoid compatibility issues and to enable complete protection of your system with Cyber Protect Home Office, uninstall the software and enable protection."

It certainly looks like Acronis believes that their product is an effective complete replacement for currently available AV products.

Under Windows you can really only have one A/V registered. In your case that is Kaspersky, so ACPHO is telling you that. I'd say your assessment is correct, but then I'm sure any of the A/V producers would say the same thing for their offering.

Bert,

There are a number of reviews and evaluations on the Cloud about Acronis Cyber Protect, some good some not as is true with any software in the data protection space.  Rather than link several reviews for you I am going to provide just one that offers a legit overview of the Cyber Protect product line along with a number of personal reviews from real users.

Keep in mind here that Acronis Cyber Protect roots are from an enterprise product and the core engine of that product is being used to develop Acronis Cyber Protect Home and Office.  The upside for me in this approach are a backup and security product all in one which makes management easier as well as the fact that in my trialing of the Acronis Cyber Protect 15 product I found it to be a solid product from both a performance and reliability standpoint. That is what I want in a product and it delivered.  I for one believe that I can say the same for the Acronis Cyber Protect Home and Office product.

Acronis Cyber Protect reviews