ESET NOD32 Antivirus was developed by ESET. It is available in two versions, the business version, and the home version.
The business version comes with additional features like Remote Administrator which allows deployment on servers and mirroring of threat signatures. ESET NOD32 is especially popular among home users.
It has a reputation for being extremely effective and user-friendly.
ESET NOD32 has got all the ‘must have’ features of quality antivirus software and offers you complete security from viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware (Learn more about spyware), rootkits (What is rootkit?), and malicious programs. ESET NOD32 Antivirus is lightweight and works behind the scene, without affecting the performance of your system.
It is also fully equipped to provide you with complete protection and security while you are online, ESET NOD32 not only protects your precious data from viruses and malicious programs, and it also protects your privacy and identity from dialers, adware, and keyloggers while you are online.
The latest version of ESET NOD32 is version 4, it is a 42MB installation file from the company website, and the size of the file is much smaller as compared to other antivirus programs such as Avira antivirus or Norton antivirus. The installation process is quick and very easy; on a dual-core processor with 2 GB of RAM, it took almost 3 minutes to complete the installation process. After installation, it did not require any reboot of the computer. Once installed, the interface of ESET NOD32 is very user-friendly and easy.
It comes in two modes, a simple mode, and an advanced mode. By default, the simple mode is activated. The simple mode has fewer options as compared to the advanced mode but it is relatively very simple compared to the advanced mode. Simple or default mode is especially useful for people who have little knowledge about computers and they need to protect their computer and data from viruses and malicious programs.
As for the appearance is concerned, both modes look the same. The advance mode adds a few extra buttons and drop-down menus to the simple mode for enhancing the functionality for advanced or professional users. Apart from these extra buttons and menus, the user interface is simple with straightforward navigation features. On the left-hand side of the dashboard, there are different categories. The default selected category is protection.
This category tells you about the current state of your computer. As it is a convention for antivirus programs, ESET NOD32 uses a color scheme for indicating the status of the computer. The green status with ‘Maximum Protection’ shows that the antivirus program is fully updated and running, scans have been performed at specific periods and no malicious program or virus is present in the hard disk or operating system area of the computer.
The yellow status means that there is a possibility that a virus is present inside the hard disk of your computer or the antivirus program is not updated. The red status indicates danger, telling the user that there is definitely a malicious program present in the hard disk or operating system of the computer and you must do a thorough scan of your computer as soon as possible. Under the protection tab, there is a ‘Scan’ category. This option lets you run a full or partial scan of your computer.
It also lets you have the ability to scan selected areas on your hard disk or schedule a scan for later. Next comes the ‘Update’ tab, this tab is used to update the virus definition or ESET NOD32 program, although the virus definition update task can be automatically completed, still the user has the ability to manually update it.
Next in the line is the ‘Set up’ tab which is used to adjust the settings of ESET NOD32 antivirus according to the needs of the user. The support section is another innovative addition. It provides gives the users of ESET NOD32 easy and quick access to articles to make them aware of the latest security threats and their precautionary measures.
In its work, ESET NOD32 is extremely effective and robust. It does not affect the performance of your computer and you can do your routine work or multitask, ESET NOD32 works silently in the background. It has two scanning modes, a smart scan and a custom scan where you can select the drives, folders, or files that you want to scan.
The scan speed was not that impressive. ESET NOD32 scanned files at 16 MB per second, much slower than the top order antivirus programs such as the Bit defender or Norton antivirus. The results of the scan were however impressive, it detected 97 percent of all the known viruses. Its proactive technology effectively blocked the download of malicious files even before they were detected as ‘contaminated’.
The latest VB test performed better than most of the other antivirus programs detecting all the viruses without any false positives. In the AV comparatives on-demand test, ESET NOD32 got 3 out of 3 stars. In the second test conducted by AV-Comparatives, the proactive test, ESET NOD32 again got 3 out of 3 stars. It is ICSA Labs certified and has also passed 45 VB 100 tests.
ESET NOD32 is among the few antivirus solutions that deliver you both speed and security without any compromise. Its heuristics-based scanning technology is extremely effective in detecting unknown viruses whose signatures are not yet available. Its ‘ThreatSense’ technology provides you state-of-the-art proactive protection from viruses that would sneak past the traditional signatures-based detection technology.
The threat sense technology also takes advantage of the user community of ESET NOD32 antivirus; here every user has the ability to notify ESET NOD32 about the latest viruses, hence enabling it to protect its other users from the virus. ESET NOD32 has a separate mode for laptops called the energy-sipping mode. It provides you state-of-the-art protection without draining the battery of your laptop or any other resources.
In conclusion, we can say that ESET NOD32 is one of the best antivirus solutions available in the market. It is engineered for speed and security and delivers rock-solid protection without affecting the performance of your computer. Its innovative features, simple user interface, and excellent help and support feature make it one of the best antivirus solutions.