CompuClever Blog

Vigilance and Silence

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In a previous article discussing whether we really need to compromise PC performance in exchange for security, we presented the CompuClever Photon technology – an innovative feature that adapts security protection to the uniqueness of your PC. Photon makes CompuClever Antivirus light and fast, imposing almost no overhead to system resources. But how should an antivirus react to a true threat when it detects an intrusion? We are often presented with popups and reminders, like the one shown below, that most of us, even including those who work in the IT industry, don’t know how to respond to, which may result in taking the wrong action.

CompuClever Antivirus PLUS works differently and better than this. It is essentially a silent security solution that only communicates useful information in language you can understand, keeping you informed and, keeping you in the driver seat. This is achieved through the combination of two features: Autopilot and Profiles.

Introducing Autopilot and Profiles

What makes CompuClever Antivirus’ user-centric approach possible is the Autopilot and Profiles features, which work hand-in-hand to deliver silent security 24/7.

Autopilot

Autopilot makes the best security decisions for users, without user interaction, while eliminating notifications and popups. When Autopilot is switched on and CompuClever Antivirus detects any type of threats, it will automatically block it. Users do NOT need to define their protection levels or what actions to take whenever a threat is detected. It is automatically enabled and can be simply disabled.

The “secret sauce” of Autopilot is another cool technology: CompuClever Profiles – an intelligent technology that determines what you are doing with your PC and makes the right decisions for PC security! Additionally, with Profiles, CompuClever Antivirus not only works silently but also optimizes your PC for its best performance.

Profiles

The Profiles technology is designed to automatically detect when users work, play, or watch movies, and it prevents other apps from slowing down the system. Beside the standard profile, there are three profiles that fit most of our day-to-day PC usage patterns: “Work”, “Game”, or “Movie”. CompuClever Antivirus PLUS will identify whenever the user is engaged in one of these activities and will maximize PC performance by directing more of the system resources to those particular applications. In addition, Profiles offers users an uninterrupted experience by postponing resource-consuming operations such as scheduled scans, automatic product updates, system maintenance tasks, Windows updates, and other third-party operations. It also suspends unnecessary background programs, eliminates pop-ups, and adjusts visual effects according to activities users are currently engaged in. Here are some behavioral description of each profile:

  • Work: postpone scheduled scans, initiate automatic product and signature updates every two hours, activate the anti-spam module, deactivate Search Advisor, and block product notifications.
  • Game: postpone scheduled scans, initiate automatic product and signature updates every twelve hours, deactivate Search Advisor, and block product notifications.
  • Movie: perform the same operations as the Game profile, but start product and signature updates every eight hours.

You can manually set your PC to one of these profiles or let Autopilot take over the control and make the best decision for you. Either way, CompuClever Antivirus PLUS ensures you are completely protected while you enjoy the best of what your PC is designed to deliver.

Real-Time Optimization

CompuClever Antivirus PLUS Real-Time Optimization is a plugin that improves your system performance silently in the background, making sure that you are not interrupted while you are in a Profile mode. Depending on the CPU load, the plugin monitors all processes, focuses on those that take up a higher load, and adjusts them to your needs.

The system is optimized by increasing the Profile’s application performance, postponing system updates and Windows automatic updates, suspending unnecessary background programs, and eliminating popups in order to provide the best movie or game experience.

Security Report

Although CompuClever Antivirus is considered completely silent, it still reports to you once a week by delivering an easy-to-understand Security Report.

The Security Report presents the security status for the past week including scans, disinfections, an events timeline, and feature recommendations. These tips are important in managing the overall protection and users can easily see actions to be taken on their PC. The overall security score is calculated based on the critical protection used previously and other conditions that might represent a security risk. The Security Report uses an issue tracking system to detect and inform users about issues that may have impacted the security of the system and the data on it.

Conclusion

To learn more about the features and benefits covered in this article:

Be still and know you are in control of your PC security with the help of CompuClever Antivirus PLUS!

Protection vs. Speed

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Does antivirus software slow down PCs? The answer is a definite Yes; but, a conditional one depending on which security software you’ve chosen to run on your PC. According to an extensive endurance test, performed by AV-Test.org, the evidence of PC performance impacted by antivirus software was more than convincing. An antivirus solution that does a mediocre job on reducing its impact on PC performance slows down your PC by taking too much resource like CPU, hard disc, and RAM. As a result, you were forced to make a compromise for speed in exchange for security.

But, is it really necessary to choose between protection and speed? A well designed antivirus program should impose minimum or no impact to PC performance while still delivering the best protection against malware and online threats. This is how CompuClever Antivirus was designed and made. Let’s dive into some details.

CompuClever Photon technology

The core technology is called “Photon” and it makes CompuClever Antivirus the lightest antivirus ever. It is an innovative antivirus technology that takes the weight of the system and accelerates scanning speed by gradually adapting to each user’s PC.

How it works

Built with the same type of artificial intelligence technology used by the robotic industry, Photon goes through the following cycle to adapt to your PC:

Click to see a larger diagram: How Photon works
  1. Fingerprinting: performed early in the installation a unique “fingerprint” was built for your system.
  2. Pre-training: a scanning pattern based on the fingerprint is then formed by querying the reputation of each application and system process from Cloud intelligence, maintaining a precise list of everything loaded in the system based on reputation.
  3. Active monitoring: whenever your system “fingerprint” changes, Photon immediately checks the reputation list and alerts the antivirus engine to take prompt and appropriate action.
  4. Continued training: when new “intel” is added to the Cloud intelligence, the reputation list will be instantly updated as it pertains to the relevancy of your system’s unique “fingerprint”.
  5. Adaptive scanning: Photon directs the antivirus engine to pay more attention to suspicious applications rather than trusted ones.

The result

Photon technology enables CompuClever Antivirus to reduce its footprint by minimizing the requirement of computing resource like CPU power, hard drive access, and memory usage. The result is obvious:

  • The antivirus is quiet and non-intrusive.
  • It brings low or no impact on system performance.
  • Your PC enjoys faster boot time.
  • Your applications runs smoothly.

Better yet, there is nothing you need to do or configure in order to enjoy the benefit of Photon – it’s built-in and pre-configured and self-adapting. Just relax and enjoy, knowing that you are both well protected and your PC is still as fast as it was before installing the program.

Recommendation

If your PC is sluggish, we recommend the following actions:

Remember, an effective security protection doesn’t have to come at the price of degraded PC performance.

Stay Safely Connected

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Email and social networking are two primary means of communicating and stay connected with family and friends. Through social network sites and emails, you share updates, post photos, and reveal things that are sometimes very personal about you.  Examples include where you live, which company you work for, whom you are related to, when and where you are going on holiday, what food you like, what music you listen to, whom you have just met, etc. By piecing these bits of information together, it becomes easy for anyone to learn more about you. And that’s also how cyber criminals find out information they want from you. Personal identity theft and online scams are two primary threats that target email and social networking users.

Identity theft

A recent study conducted by Bitdefender, a leading European security technology provider, discovered that more than a quarter of a million email addresses, usernames, and passwords can be found easily through social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, personal blog postings, chat forums, and download sites. Surprisingly, 87% of these compromised credentials still provided valid access to personal email and social networking accounts. What’s more astonishing was that 75% of the people in this study use the same password for all their accounts. Hackers really didn’t have to look too hard to gain access to your identity and private information.

Online scams

Users of the social networking site Facebook are informed through a notification system and by e-mail that they have been made administrators of an unknown page and are directed to click on a link that takes them to a fake Facebook page. Once a user has landed on the fake Facebook page, they are re-directed to a different, malicious site where they are asked to provide their e-mail and shipping address in order to take part in a test session of the new Apple iPad. The scam states that Apple is giving away a total of 10,000 iPad2s for review. Making it even more believable, some of the notifications came from emails and posts sent by family members or friends whose PCs were also compromised. You trust your friends, but can you trust their computers as well?

Stay connected safely

Security experts recommend the following guidelines so that you can avoid security risks while staying connected online:

  • Avoid publishing any information that can be used to identify you, such as phone numbers; your home, school, or work address; your birthday; and your social security number.
  • Use different sets of username and passwords for email and social networking sites.
  • Avoid posting holiday dates, locations, or even pictures while you are away. Otherwise, you leave perfect “bread crumbs” for burglars to follow.
  • Never include bank or credit card information in emails or posts.
  • Install and deploy an effective and updated antivirus / anti-spyware solution that features a strong anti-phishing mechanism.

Introducing – Data Protection

CompuClever Antivirus PLUS features an ironclad information safety mechanism called Data Protection. Data Protection prevents sensitive data leaks when you are online. Based on the rules you create, Data Protection scans the web, e-mail, and instant messaging traffic sent by your computer.  It looks for specific character strings, for example, your credit card number. If there is a match, the respective web page, e-mail, or instant message is blocked.

You can create rules to protect any piece of information you might consider personal or confidential, from your phone number or e-mail address to your bank account information. Multi-user support is provided so that more than one person can log on to Windows using different user accounts and can configure their own rules. If your Windows account is an administrator account, the rules you create can be configured to also apply when other users of the computer are logged on to their Windows accounts.

Define what data you want to protect

Define how you want the data be protected

Extra peace of mind

Rest assured, personal information provided to the Data Protection tool is encrypted and cannot be used by anyone else but you. Also for extra safety, you can just enter part of the information that you like to protect. For instance, if you want to prevent leakage of your credit card number, you can just enter the last four digits of the card number so that any web traffic leaving your computer with the same combination of digits will be blocked. It’s a smart way of safeguarding data without any compromise.

Recommendation

Surf with Confidence

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Unlike shark attacks, cyber-attacks are numerous, sophisticated, and ever-changing. Many cyber criminals who have managed to evade law enforcement are not only resourceful but also considered experts. To a certain extent they are even innovative. Compelled by the sinister desire of luring more victims while remaining undetected, hackers diligently invent new techniques and schemes to exploit systems of users who are even security-conscious.

Jaw-dropping

The cases presented below are a couple of example of classical cyber-attacks that are conniving, stealthy, and almost ingenious.

  • Case 1: While surfing the web at home, the user of a hacked PC was prompted to create new accounts in order to use her own Wireless Access Points (WAP). Not knowing what was happening behind the scenes, the victim would use a common username or email address along with a password that was used for several other online accounts.  The result: the hackers gained complete and unblocked access to her email, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or even online banking site.
  • Case 2: On the premises of a Starbucks coffee shop, hackers positioned a Wi-Fi hotspot and disguise it so that it appears to belong to Starbucks. Attackers then redirect victims to frequently used websites that were actually modified or fake to capture login credentials or deploy keylogging malware to harvest personal identity information. This type of cyber-attack even has a code name: waterholes.

Would you believe that the waterholes scheme was so effective it even captured victims from cafeterias inside high-tech companies such as Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft? More than likely, those techies have some sort of antivirus solution on their laptops. But the reality is harsher – a bare bones antivirus software without proper web protection is not going to cut it.

Proper web protection

So what types of web protection can help fend off and defy cyber-attacks? You need exactly two types of protection:

  1. Anti-phishing protection that alerts you of potential phishing websites. This prevents you from falling prey to the “honey traps” set up by hackers.
  2. Real-time web protection against malicious code or downloads embedded in the web. This prevents your computer from being infected or even controlled.

Web protection in CompuClever Antivirus PLUS

CompuClever Antivirus PLUS Web protection ensures a safe browsing experience by alerting you about potential phishing web pages. It provides real-time web protection for popular web browsers including:

  • Internet Explorer
  • Firefox
  • Google Chrome

The web protection feature provides two functions:

  • Web Toolbar, which automatically blocks you from accidentally visiting a phishing or compromised website.

    Web toolbar blocking a suspicious site

  • Search Adviser, a component that rates the results of search engine queries and links posted on social networking websites by placing an icon next to every result.  Working like a traffic light, the Search Advisor tells you if a site, as recommended by a search engine, is safe, suspicious, or dangerous.

    Search Advisor

The web protection feature is seamlessly embedded with your default web browser. It is always at your side protecting your web surfing experience without being in the way.

Check out the detailed information about CompuClever Antivirus PLUS Web Protection:

Click here to learn more about CompuClever Antivirus PLUS.

If your antivirus solution doesn’t provide web protection specifically, you should still follow these best-practices to protect yourself against cyber attacks:

  • Do not provide your personal information via e-mail.
  • Do not click any links you receive from senders you do not know.
  • Do not download attachments from unknown senders.
  • Download files only from trusted websites.
  • Check if the final price is the same with the price displayed at the start of a transaction.
  • Keep your antivirus solution updated. If you are not using an antivirus solution, we recommend you install one as soon as possible.
  • Do not log in to your financial account from unknown networks.

Safeguard Your Online Banking

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Over the last few years Internet fraud has increased and is becoming a serious issue for online transactions. Using a variety of methods, online thieves can easily access important information like bank accounts and personal data. This article helps you to understand essential techniques hackers deploy to break into your bank account and how to nullify these hacking attempts by using tools that may already be available with your antivirus application.

How hackers infiltrate your bank account

To infiltrate your bank account hackers need exactly the same set of complete credentials you would supply to your online banking site. It is extremely rare, although not impossible, that a hacker would directly contact someone who would then voluntarily give away her bank account number, login name, and password over the phone or email. But it is very common that a compromised PC infested with malware can provide hackers with the necessary recorded keystrokes, mouse clicks, and even screenshots. By mimicking the procedures they’ve learned with the obtained credentials, hackers can digitally impersonate you and thus gain access to your bank accounts over the Internet with ease.

How to nullify online banking hacking attempts

You can defuse these attempts head-on by knowing the essential schemes used by hackers. First and foremost, guard your PC with an effective antivirus program and prevent any malware from landing on your computer. But that’s not enough, remember we talked about known and unknown malware? What if a new and unknown malware has made its way through the first layer of defense of detection? That’s when the second layer of defense comes to the rescue. To effectively nullify online banking hacks, you also need to:

  • Secure your web browser and data transaction: The web browser is the weakest link of the entire online banking infrastructure and can be hijacked by third-party add-ons / toolbars / extensions and is also susceptible to phishing attempts.
  • Disable logging of your keyboard and mouse movements: Make your keyboard and mouse movement virtually invisible and un-recordable.
  • Disable screenshots: prevent your PC’s screen from being digitally captured or copied.

They all sound theoretically and logically fine but there is no trivial way to configure your PC to take these measures without having software specifically designed to achieve such purposes.

Features that you should demand from security software

As stated above, your security software should provide you with extra measures to protect you from online banking hacks. Let’s illustrate how these features work using CompuClever Antivirus PLUS as an example.

Click to learn more...
CompuClever SafepayTM

CompuClever Safepay is a proprietary and dedicated browser designed specifically for online banking. It creates a sealed environment, shielded from third party intrusions. Compared to products that use browser extensions, CompuClever Safepay offers superior protection because it doesn’t rely on browsers with known vulnerabilities to a large array of attacks.

The dedicated Safepay environment gives you the following benefits:

  • It uses its own browser to avoid malware attacks.
  • It blocks add-ons and extensions which are the weakest link with browser security.
  • It scans all URLs for signs of malware and phishing compromise.

More importantly, CompuClever Safepay also:

  • Completely disables any key logging or mouse tracking attempts, and
  • Prevents any screen information from being captured or recorded – even   the [Print Screen] key is disabled during your session.

You can visit the online help file to learn more about how to maximize the benefit using CompuClever Safepay for online banking protection.

We recommend you check and discover if your existing security product provides equivalent functionality. If it doesn’t or you are in doubt, we recommend you try CompuClever Antivirus PLUS for secure online banking.