Could I run Avira Free Antivirus with KingSoft Antivirus?

[indie]

My favorite FREE antivirus is Avira Free Antivirus. It was highly recommended by Gizmo's Freeware some time ago. Yes, Avira's pop-ups are annoying, but it comes with the territory having the best FREE antivirus available.
I used to recommend Avira to everybody, but because of its pop-ups, I was getting way too many complaints about it; therefore, I decided:
Avira Free Antivirus for my computers, and
for all those "pop-up's complainers" - free MSE antivirus or AVAST.
Recently, I installed KingSoft Antivirus 2012 with cloud security system. It's a free Cloud antivirus from China.
There are no conflicts between Avira Free Antivirus and KingSoft Antivirus. No issues. No delays. No system freezes. No crashes. Nothing.
EXCEPTION.
The developers warn that VIPRE Antivirus, Ad-aware, UnThreat and other products using the Vipre engine are not compatible with Kingsoft Antivirus.

I truly believe that KingSoft Antivirus adds some extra protection to Avira without any drag on my system. Further more, Avira's anti-malware engines will be used in Kingsoft's 2013 PC desktop security software.

[MidnightCowboy]

Using two antivurus programs running in real time on the same machine is never recommended. Several vendors claim their products can be run this way but I have never seen a machine so setup that didn't eventually cause problems, if only confusion.

The fact is no antivurus gives protection much greater than 95% so you could install 10 of them and still have a 5% potential exposure to malware which is massive. How you close this gap is all about what you do and not how many extra antivirus programs you install.

You might find some of the information here useful.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/cont...under-hour.htm

[indie]

With all my respect MC, I’d like to hear some horror stories about using both Avira Free Antivirus and KingSoft Cloud Antivirus 2012 together, not just some old dogmas about two AV’s being on the same computer.
As a proud student of Gizmo’s Free University, I’ve installed Avira Free Antivirus and KingSoft Antivirus 2012 on several XP, Vista, and Win 7 computers. No issues, no freezes, no slowdowns, nothing.
And it’s FREE.
Plus, KingSoft Antivirus has some extra protection - Boundary Defense, Anti-hacker, and VulFix - that Avira Free AV is not offering. It takes about 40 - 60 seconds to run a quick scan on KingSoft.
As you said, no one can be safe with just one AV - free or commercial; therefore, in addition to Avira and KingSoft AV’s, every morning I update free Malwarebytes AntiMalware and run a quick scan, and free HitMan PRO. Once a week, I run (all free) SAS, Spybot S&D v.1.6.2, Kaspersky TDSS Killer and free NPE - “Norton Power Eraser is a FREE tool that will easily detect and remove threats from your computer such as rootkits, Fake AV, rogueware, and scamware.” Once a month, I run free Sophos Virus Removal Tool or free ESET online scanner. Just recently I added free MalwareBytes Anti-Root kit.
MC, please provide some specific info about running Avira and KingSoft AV’s simultaneously.

[bo.elam]

Originally Posted by indie

There are no conflicts between Avira Free Antivirus and KingSoft Antivirus. No issues. No delays. No system freezes. No crashes. Nothing.

Sooner or later you will have a conflict.

Hopefully, it wont happen when something malicious tries to come in and both antiviruses fight to make the detection at the same time.

Bo

[v.laurie]

Originally Posted by indie

With all my respect MC, I’d like to hear some horror stories about using both Avira Free Antivirus and KingSoft Cloud Antivirus 2012 together, not just some old dogmas about two AV’s being on the same computer.

While two antivirus programs can sit on the same PC with no apparent problem there is always the danger of a conflict. Antivirus programs run at a low level on a PC. So do some malware programs. One antivirus program can interpret the low-level actions of the other anti-virus program to be malicious. You may be able to have two or more antivirus programs as long as they are not used simultaneously for real time protection. If you use them only for manual scans , one at a time, then it may be OK. But it may not - it depends on the exact way the antivirus programs work.

But you may want to find out for yourself so let us know how your experiment with using multiple antivirus programs works out. I am an experimental scientist myself and I am always interested in seeing new data.

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by indie

MC, please provide some specific info about running Avira and KingSoft AV’s simultaneously.

During my work with Gizmo's I am in contact with vendors and devs from all categories of software development. Regarding security vendors, this was the advisory I received from one, but they all basically say the same.

I. ADVANTAGES

Using two antivirus products on the same computer MAY increase your security
- one security product might find viruses that another cannot.

II. DISATVANTAGES

1. Imagine having two suites that have a real-time protection feature. Most
default settings make it so all accessed files are scanned, even though they
do not have to be explicitly accessed by you - they can also be dlls loaded
by some random process, a BHO that's executed by the browser, or another
security suite.

In these circumstances, when you open a single jpeg file, it will be
scanned, thus, accessed by both your security suites (almost all antiviruses
have an executable or service that's running all the time in order to scan
the files in a real time fashion). Before the file can be opened, it will be
scanned by both background services. The on-access exe of suite A will see
that the on-access exe of suite B is also trying to access the picture, and
vice-versa. Because of this, they'll also scan each other before actually
opening the picture, almost tripling the load times on systems with lower
hardware resources.

2. This can also degenerate in lots of other problems, depending on how the
on-access module is written. If one of the suites operates via a service
registered in a svchost instance, it will max out the CPU usage for that
specific instance - which can impact other services that are using that
instance as well.

3. All of these problems can replicate when other two similar modules found
in internet security suites collide (firewalls or spamfilters). Most modern
software firewalls employ drivers directly on the NIC to filter traffic.
More than one driver can cause connectivity slowdowns, or if, by any chance,
the two firewalls have conflicting rules, total connection loss. Spamfilters
(depending on the client) work either via normal rules or add-ins. If a
certain add-in tells the client that one of the emails is in it's server
side whitelist and should not be deleted, but the other one tells it it's
junk because it has a nasty header, the client will either hang trying to
decide what action to take, or will give birth to all sorts of unwanted
side-effects.

III. CONCLUSION.

All of the above are aspects why we recommend everyone should use a single
security suite. Other programs can be used, as long as they don't have
real-time features, but the intention behind these warnings is by no
means that of corporate profit, or other type of such absurd claims.

---------------------------------------------------

So, unless you want to believe they are all lying, it is more than likely that overall protection is actually reduced by running two programs and not the other way around. Yes, there is the scenario that one may recognise malware code missed by the other, but you can achieve this with a passive scanner without the risk associated with using a second real time module.

There's also another element as illustrated by this quote which again is typical of what you will see in many of the tech forums.

"I have downloaded and tested every available anti-malware software and not one of them worked as claimed".

Once you begin to appreciate the amount of money that is to be made selling security software for Windows, then you can also understand why there are so many rogue and scam programs. Even the legitimate ones are on safe ground because at the end of the day they are not accountable for individual machines that become infected while using their products.

Regarding Kingsoft specifically, the last time they participated in independent testing they were literally bottom of the detection pile and even failed to achieve a VB certification for half of the tests they participated in. Now, suddenly, they have a revamped program with all sorts of fancy terms applied to what it does and yet they are nowhere to be seen in any test results. On top of all this we are led to believe they have tested their software on multiple platforms with every other antivirus available or else how can they claim it will work alongside these without conflict? Lastly, they give it away for free. Even the math doesn't add up here.

Nowhere here does it say that MC is always right, but I do give what I believe to be the best advice in good faith, and that is users are better served by picking just one good free antivirus and using it together with the usual browser add-ons and safe surfing practises. When I was directly connected with PC servicing, I lost count of the number of infected machines that were installed with the latest "we will protect you from everything" solutions. As in my other post, it matters little whether you have 10 antivirus programs installed, they will all need some help from you the user if your machine is to stay virus free.

Although no two sets of test results are ever likely to agree, if you take the ongoing VB RAP tests as an example, you can see how many free programs there are now in the top group. Of these, Avira is the lead solution so my logical question is why even risk degrading this protection by installing an unproven and untested product with it?

http://www.virusbtn.com/vb100/RAP/RA...Oct12-1200.jpg

[indie]

Thank you, MC, for your in-depth answer about AV’s.
Please, help me understand the following report:
AV-Comparatives.org was commissioned by KingSoft to test their AV 2012.
Test results:
Total Detection Rates - 99.8%
Number of False Alarms - 13 (few).
http://av-comparatives.org/comparati...gsoft-sep-2012
Also, “Kinsgsoft’s recommendation is if you are running it alongside of another antivirus program as a backup use the Quick Mode.
If you are running it as a standalone antivirus program use the Standard mode".
Also, some of my friends have been using Avast IS 7.0.1474 + Kingsoft Antivirus 2012 SP5.4 together without problems.
From KingSoft Forum:
"what makes kingsoft special among all is that kingsoft can be used either Standalone or alongside of any Antivirus that you desire."
I’ve tried some “Tests and malware analysis tools” from Gizmo’s web-site.
In some cases, Avira was informing about the danger, in other cases - KingSoft.
So far, no issues running Avira Free AV (without Internet Protection) with KingSoft AV.

[MidnightCowboy]

As you say, this test was specially commissioned so Kingsoft would have to be pretty dumb if their product wasn't set up to pass it with flying colours. What we need to see with this, or indeed any other product, is a series over time as provided by the VB RAP tests. This gives users a much more comprehensive picture from which to make a decision as opposed to just a single snapshot event.

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by indie

I’ve tried some “Tests and malware analysis tools” from Gizmo’s web-site.
In some cases, Avira was informing about the danger, in other cases – KingSoft.

Unfortunately such statements have no value without knowing full details of the files detected, including the system path, the OS details and how both programs were configured.

This actual scenario was tested some time back by BullGuard when the actions of the secondary program (in some instances) prevented theirs from issuing an alert. When the secondary program was removed however, their alert appeared as normal. This is why this type of setup can be dangerous because both sets of code end up competing for the same file access and system resources.

[indie]

MC,

Could you elaborate on your statement,
"this test was specially commissioned so Kingsoft would have to be pretty dumb if their product wasn't set up to pass it with flying colours".
Do you mean, they used a different scan engine for it or ,just for one time, they used different cloud scanning techniques?