New DNS Service from Sunbelt

[MidnightCowboy]

Folks choose their antivirus solutions for a variety of reasons from the color of the GUI through to the test results posted by CabbagePatch on Youtube

Sometimes there is a real feeling that paying for a solution gets you more than what is available for free. In real life though, apart from possibly better support, this often isn’t the case.

This comment from one of the techs at Sunbelt possibly shoots their own marketing in the foot and will no doubt be of interest to everyone. Vipre is recognised as having good proactive capabilities especially when it comes to web filtering.


“VIPRE Premium and ClearCloud do essentially the same thing--block malicious sites.

VIPRE is an on-box solution that will inspect the http:// traffic first, and if the site is listed there, it will block it before your browser sends the URL out to the DNS service. ClearCloud works at the DNS level, and adds an additional layer of security. By its very nature, it can be updated faster with malicious sites, or have expired sites removed.

VIPRE Premium's web filter will block programs that don't use the browser to try to phone home. All http:// traffic gets filtered. ClearCloud does as well. The main difference for users is that ClearCloud is updated much faster and zero-day threat info is added automatically, giving an extra edge in protection”.

As I read this, with most threats being web based, using ClearCloud with a “supposedly” lesser performing freeware AV is a real alternative to a “supposedly” more effective commercial program, and could even be better

This also demonstrates the weaknesses of the so called video tests posted by languy99 and others whereby many of the links they open would be automatically blocked by users with an appropriate DNS filter.

If my summary above proves to be accurate I just hope that Sunbelt keep their DNS service free.



If anyone can't work out what all the server location abbreviations are on their status page by the way, these are they:

Atlanta
Chicago
London
Los Angeles
New York City
Palo Alto
Seattle
Sydney
Tampa
Virginia

[deya]

It'll be interesting to see if these services remain free because the more you look into them the more you realise just what a valuable service these vendors are providing, free of charge. I'm not so sure that I'd trust the DNS service that my ISP provides now.

ClearCloud, Norton etc. are definitely faster, they don't slow down page loading during peak times, which has been a problem for me in the past, plus you get the extra layer of protection you've outlined, above.

It's interesting to see that they both provide the free app [ClearCloud and Norton DNS] so they obviously want to make it easier for people to use the service and it would be nice to think that they'll remain free, and to be honest I think it's good PR for the companies involved.

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by deya

It'll be interesting to see if these services remain free because the more you look into them the more you realise just what a valuable service these vendors are providing, free of charge. I'm not so sure that I'd trust the DNS service that my ISP provides now.

Agreed 100%.

My only fear with ClearCloud is that it might get swallowed up as a component in Vipre once it goes final but then the physical limitations of providing the updates will degrade the current performance. Zero day threats are definitely flavour of the month and DNS services like this are right in the front line.

I also wish that Sunbelt would upgrade their standalone firewall for Windows 7 instead of confining this development to Vipre. The popularity of the new Zone Alarm free shows that there is a definite demand for this type of firewall and enough folks would surely upgrade to the paid version without using Vipre to make it viable.

[vasa1]

More praise here:
Steer Clear of Malware Web Sites With ClearCloud DNS

[MidnightCowboy]

Seems the word is spreading

The only thing that surprises me is that Microsoft haven't got in on this act with their own service yet, even if it was linked to MSE and not as a standalone.