1. Nod32 30 Day Free Trial
2. Eset Antivirus Free Download 2019
3. Eset Nod32 Free Download
4. Eset Antivirus
5. Eset Antivirus Software Review 2019
6. Eset Antivirus Software Review 2018

• Pros

  Very good scores from independent testing labs. Good scores in our hands-on tests. HIPS component blocks exploits. UEFI scanner finds malware in firmware. Comprehensive device control.

• Cons

  So-so phishing protection score. Device control too complex for most users.

• Bottom Line

  ESET NOD32 Antivirus gets good scores in lab tests and our own tests, and its collection of security components goes far beyond antivirus basics.

Your antivirus utility must clear out any malware infestations and fend off further attacks; that's the baseline. Some products stick to those essential activities; others, like ESET NOD32 Antivirus, go quite a bit beyond. Among other bonus features, NOD32 includes a Host Intrusion Prevention System, a scanner for your PC's firmware, and an elaborate device control system. It does well in our testing, though some of its bonus features may be too complex for the average user.

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Antivirus software is critical for every PC. Without it, you risk losing your personal information, your files, and even the cash from your bank account. We've tested more than 40 utilities to. No one tests antivirus software like we do. Get ratings, pricing, and performance on the ESET Internet Security - 2019 antivirus software based on the features you care about.

ESET Antivirus Software Review: Protection on a Diet ESET's antivirus software has a remarkably light system impact, but its malware protection is average. ESET is a lightweight antivirus program that provides protection to millions of users in more than 200 countries worldwide. The software also offers solid security and privacy features that will keep your data safe while you’re shopping online.

A NOD32 subscription costs $39.99 per year; additional licenses, up to a total of five, add $10 per year. Kaspersky, Bitdefender Antivirus Plus, Webroot, and quite a few others come in at or near that $39.99 price point for one license. McAfee costs $59.99 per year, but that gets you licenses for every device in your household, including devices running Windows, macOS, Android, or iOS.

Just about every antivirus program includes the ability to detect and remove potentially unwanted applications (PUAs)—programs that, while not actively malicious, cause problems that outweigh any virtues they may have. Some default to removing these PUAs, while others default to leaving them alone. NOD32 makes you actively choose whether to remove PUAs during installation. I enabled PUA detection, and I advise you to do the same. After installation, NOD32 launches a scan; for testing purposes I halted this initial scan, saving a full scan for later.

The main window includes plenty of whitespace, along with a picture of ESET's blue-eyed cyborg mascot. To launch a scan or an update, you can use either the left-side menu or a pair of large blue panels near the bottom of the window. If there's a configuration problem, the green security banner goes red. And if ESET needs your attention—to show the results of a completed scan, for example—you see a little number next to the corresponding menu item.

Like Symantec Norton AntiVirus Basic, NOD32 gives you a ton of settings to tweak its configuration. And as with Norton, you don't have to page through all those options to find the one you want; you can just start typing in the search box. This may not become an issue, though, as the product's default settings are set for optimal security.

Very Good Lab Results

Three of the four independent testing labs I follow include NOD32 in their testing, and its scores range from good to excellent. Less than half of tested products pass the banking Trojans test performed by MRG-Effitas; NOD32 is among the success stories. This lab's broad malware protection test offers Level 1 certification to products that completely prevent all attacks, and Level 2 certification if the product misses some initially but eliminates them within 24 hours. All products passed the latest test; NOD32 earned Level 2 certification. Avira, Bitdefender, and Kaspersky Anti-Virus are the only products to both pass the banking test and receive Level 1 certification in the general malware test.

Researchers at London-based SE Labs capture real-world malicious websites and use a replay system to give all tested products the same malware attack experience. Products can receive certification at five levels: AAA, AA, A, B, and C. Like about half of the products appearing in the latest test report, NOD32 achieved AAA certification.

At AV-Comparatives, testers don't assign numeric scores. A product that passes any test receives Standard certification, while those that go beyond the minimum passing score can take Advanced or Advanced+ certification. Of the four tests from this lab that I follow, NOD32 received three Advanced+ certifications and one Advanced. Avast Free Antivirus and Bitdefender took Advanced+ in all four tests.

I also follow reports from AV-Test Institute, but ESET hasn't appeared in this lab's reports since about a year ago. Still, having current tests from three out of four labs is quite good.

For each product that received scores from at least two labs, my scoring algorithm maps all the results onto a 10-point scale and generates an aggregate lab score. ESET's 9.7 is quite good, though Bitdefender, also tested by three labs, managed a perfect 10. Tested by all four labs, Avira scored 9.9 points and Kaspersky 9.7.

Scan Choices

I timed a full scan of my standard clean test system and found that NOD32 finished in 66 minutes. That's longer than the current average of about 45 minutes, but not terrible. Also, during that initial scan, NOD32 optimizes for subsequent scanning, marking known good programs that don't require another look. A second scan finished in just seven minutes.

NOD32 doesn't offer the quick scan option found in many antivirus products, but it gives you several custom scanning choices. You can drop suspect files or folders on the scan page for a quick checkup. It offers to scan each removable drive you mount. And from the custom scan menu you can scan memory, boot sectors, or any local or network drive.

The boot sector scan I mentioned also actively triggers NOD32's UEFI scanner. UEFI (which stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) is what modern computers use instead of the antique BIOS. The UEFI scanner also runs in the background, making sure no malware has subverted your firmware. I assume it works; I have no way to trigger its protection for testing purposes. And it's important. Any malware that weaseled into the firmware would have total control over your computer.

Very Good Malware Protection

I'm always happy to have results reported by the independent labs, but not every product makes it into those reports. Even when results are available, I still run my hands-on malware protection testing, so I can see the product's defenses in action.

When I opened the folder containing my current collection of malware samples, NOD32's real-time protection gave them the once-over. However, it only eliminated 31 percent of them at this point. Continuing the test, I launched the remaining samples. Clearly the antivirus applies a tougher standard to programs that are about to launch; it prevented quite a few samples from launching at all. It did flag some as potentially unwanted applications (PUAs); I chose to delete all of those. In other cases, it caught a malware component during the installation process.

Like Norton, Bitdefender, and several others, ESET detected 93 percent of the samples one way or another. However, the fact that it let several samples install executable files brought its overall score down to 8.8 points. Tested with this same sample set, Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus managed 100 percent detection and a perfect 10 points. G Data came close, with 97 percent detection and 9.5 points.

It takes me quite a while to collect and analyze a new set of malware samples, so those necessarily stay the same for months. To check a product's protection against current in-the-wild threats, I start with a feed of malware-hosting URLs detected in the last few days by researchers at MRG-Effitas. I launch each URL in turn and note whether the antivirus prevents access to the URL, eliminates the malware payload, or utterly fails to detect the threat.

I observed that when the web protection component detected a dangerous URL, it both replaced the page with an in-browser warning and displayed a popup notification. If a non-browser program attempted to access such a site, you'd just see that popup, and indeed, I ran into that situation in testing.

In some cases, NOD32 described a site as potentially unwanted, using a yellow banner rather than red, much as it distinguishes potentially unwanted applications from undeniable malware. I counted these as successful detections.

NOD32 protected against 95 percent of the malware downloads, leaning heavily toward blocking at the URL level. That's an impressive showing. However, others have done even better. Avira one-upped NOD32 with 96 percent and McAfee and Trend Micro Antivirus+ Security managed 97 percent, while Norton and Bitdefender reached 99 percent protection.

So-So Phishing Protection

Writing code to evade antivirus tools and steal people's passwords is tough. Fooling people into just giving you those passwords can be much easier. Phishing websites imitate secure sites of all kinds, from online banking systems to dating sites. The netizen who logs in to one of these frauds has just given away access to the real account. It's possible to spot phishing scams if you're alert, but having help from your antivirus means you're protected even before you've had your coffee.

To start my phishing test, I scrape reported frauds from websites that track such things, making sure to include ones that are so new they haven't yet been analyzed and blacklisted. Phishing sites are ephemeral, and the very newest ones are typically the most effective. I launch each suspected URL in a browser protected by the product under test and simultaneously in instances of Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer protected only by the browser's built-in phishing detection.

If a URL doesn't load properly in any of the four test systems, I discard it. If it doesn't fit the profile for a phishing site, meaning it's trying to steal login credentials, I discard it. Analyzing those that remain gives me a window into the product's phishing protection skills.

NOD32 detected 85 percent of the verified frauds, which isn't great. In their latest tests, Kaspersky and McAfee AntiVirus Plus flagged 100 percent of the phishing URLs, and another half-dozen managed 97 percent or better. I did find that Chrome and Internet Explorer fared even worse against this latest group of phishing URLs, so layering on NOD32's protection would have some benefit.

I tested ESET Cyber Security (for Mac) with the same set of samples and found that its behavior didn't track with that of the Windows-based product. It earned a lower score overall. That's not uncommon, but in recent tests McAfee and Webroot performed precisely the same on the two platforms.

HIPS to Block Exploits

ESET's suite products add firewall and network protection, but, as with Norton, even the standalone antivirus offers a Host Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS). To test the mettle of this component, I hit the test system with 30 exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool. The HIPS detected and blocked many of the malware payloads that the exploits tried to drop.

None of the exploits penetrated security, since the test system is fully patched. NOD32 detected 55 percent of the attacks, identifying about half of those by the official exploit number. That's a better score than many, though not at the top. Tested with the same exploits, G Data caught 68 percent and identified almost all of those by name. Kaspersky and Norton detected 85 percent and 82 percent, respectively.

Elaborate Device Control

NOD32's Device Control is a feature more suited to business settings than to consumer use. Out of the box, this feature is disabled; to enable it you must reboot the system. With Device Control active, you can prevent the use of a wide variety of device types, while making exceptions for trusted devices. The purpose is to prevent anyone from stealing data by copying to unauthorized external drives, and to prevent infestation by USB-based malware.

ESET isn't the only security company offering such a feature. Device Protection in Avira Antivirus Pro lets you whitelist or blacklist specific devices, and you can password-protect settings so nobody can mess with the lists. However, even when password protection is active, any user can whitelist a new, unknown drive. G Data Total Security offers more advanced device control, and it can prevent others from adding exceptions. Note, though, that this is a top-tier mega-suite. ESET puts device control in its basic antivirus.

The Device Control system in NOD32 is the most elaborate of any I've seen. You can create rules for a wide variety of devices, including card readers, imaging devices, and Bluetooth devices, as well as more traditional external drives. Each rule sets an action for a device type, an individual device, or a group of devices. Available actions include blocking use of the device, opening it in read-only mode, or allowing full read/write privileges.

You can also configure NOD32 to give a warning when someone plugs in an unknown device, letting them know that if they create an exception the action will show up in NOD32's log. Knowing the action is logged should make the user think twice, and possibly cancel.

As with G Data and others, using this system is a game of rules and exceptions. For example, you could start by forcing read-only use of CD/DVD drives, so nobody can burn secrets to disk. On top of that, you might create an exception allowing you, but nobody else, to burn disks. Or you could ban removable drives but permit specific authorized ones.

In a super-techie household, you might set different access levels for different user accounts, with full access for you but limited access for others. Note, though, that NOD32 relies on the awkward Select Users or Groups dialog to pick user accounts rather than providing a more user-friendly account list.

Yes, even less technical consumers can probably manage to configure NOD32 so the kids can't corrupt the system with infected thumb drives, but it's not easy. Most users should leave this feature turned off.

Useful Security Tools

Device Control isn't the only feature that takes NOD32 beyond the realm of simple antivirus. There's a whole page of tools to enhance your security experience. Some are useful to all; others require a technical mindset.

Several of the tools give you views of what NOD32 has been doing for you. The Security Report displays statistics on how many applications, web pages, and other objects NOD32 has scanned, along with a world map showing the current malware situation. You can peruse logs of malware detections, HIPS events, and more. And a link to the Quarantine area lets you see the threats that NOD32 has neutralized.

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Bringing up the Running Processes list shows you every process that's running, with a lot more information than you'd get just by looking at Task Manager. Drawing from ESET's LiveGrid analysis system, it reports the reputation, number of users, and time of discovery for each process. This chart, like the chart of file system activity, may be more useful to a tech support agent who's examining your system remotely.

If a NOD32 scan detected and removed malware but you still feel like you've got malware on the system, you can click to download ESET's SysRescueLive tool. This tool runs from a bootable DVD or USB, meaning Windows-based malware is powerless to resist it. I suggest you create the rescue disk right away, since malware that's virulent enough to require it might prevent you from creating it later.

Quite a few competing products offer a similar bootable rescue disk, to handle the most persistent malware. Bitdefender one-ups the bunch, though. Its Rescue Mode lets you boot to an alternate operating system without the need to create a disk.

Many security suites offer a system cleaner that wipes out junk files and erases traces of your computer and web-surfing history. With NOD32, System Cleaner has a different meaning. Like Webroot's similar feature, it aims to correct and restore system settings that malware may have modified. For example, some ransomware replaces your desktop wallpaper with a ransom note, even before attempting encryption behaviors that might trigger an antivirus reaction.

Eset Antivirus Free Download 2019

Everybody should run the SysInspector tool right after installing NOD32. This scanner logs a ton of details about your PCs configuration, including what services are active, the status of critical system files, and essential Registry entries. The report alone might be valuable to a tech support agent, but the key is SysInspector's ability to compare two reports and tell you what changed. If you run into any kind of system problem, comparing the current status with a no-problem baseline should give you a clue as to the cause.

Even if you always get someone else to help you out of computer jams, you should still run a baseline SysInspector report. Your tech-savvy niece or remote-control tech support agent will find it extremely helpful.

Good for Techies

In tests by independent labs, as well as in our own tests, NOD32's scores range from good to excellent. It offers numerous features beyond the basics of deleting malware and preventing new attacks. If you're tech-savvy enough to use it, the Device Control system is the most comprehensive we've seen. And at the suite level, ESET is the favorite security tool among PCMag Readers.

NOD32 is a worthy contender, but you should also consider our Editors' Choice antivirus tools. Bitdefender Antivirus Plus and Kaspersky Anti-Virus consistently earn top scores from the independent testing labs. McAfee AntiVirus Plus doesn't score as high, but it protects every device in your household. Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus aced our hands-on malware protection test, and it's the tiniest antivirus around.

ESET NOD32 Antivirus

Bottom Line: ESET NOD32 Antivirus gets good scores in lab tests and our own tests, and its collection of security components goes far beyond antivirus basics.

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Bratislava-based ESET was founded by a group of friends some 25 years ago to market their NOD antivirus software. These days it has a broad portfolio of products covering all the major platforms, and is used by 100 million customers all around the world.

Eset Nod32 Free Download

ESET NOD32 Antivirus is the company's baseline product. It's far more focused on the core antivirus task than some of the competition – there's no file shredder, password manager or other bonus extras – but that doesn't mean the package is short on features. If anything, it has more than most.

There's real-time malware protection, of course. A cloud-based file reputation service helps you quickly detect the latest malware, while an antiphishing module detects and blocks scam websites.

ESET NOD32 has extra layers to block exploits, protect you from ransomware, and detect attacks using PowerShell and malicious JavaScripts.

A Device Control module limits the risk of infection from other devices by controlling access to USB sticks, external hard drives, optical storage media, even devices connecting by Bluetooth and FireWire.

New features include an UEFI scanner to check for malware in your PC's firmware. There are new tools to manage your ESET licenses, and a referral program gives you an extension in your trial license for everyone they can get to install and run the software.

If all this power somehow isn't enough, you're able to adjust how the package works with the help of more than 150 profile settings.

ESET NOD32 is priced at $39 (£30) for a one PC, one-year license. That's fairly typical for a premium package - Bitdefender's Antivirus Plus costs the same - but there are marginally better deals around. Kaspersky Antivirus is currently $29.25 (£22.50) for the first year, for instance, and $32.50 (£25) on renewal.

If you've several systems to protect, steep discounting makes ESET look much better value. A four computer, three-year license costs only $130 (£100), for instance, or $10.83 (£8.33) per device year.

If you're looking for that kind of multi-system license, though, also consider ESET Internet Security. It adds many security suite features – a firewall, antispam, parental controls, webcam protection, more – but is only fractionally more expensive, with its four computer, three-year license costing $144 (£115), or $12.45 (£9.58) per device year.

Setup

ESET NOD32 is available in a 30-day free trial. We had to provide our email address to activate it, but otherwise the installation ran smoothly, downloading and installing the main ESET NOD32 package, automatically updating itself and running an initial scan.

Checking the installed files revealed no great surprises. They were well-organized and digitally signed, grabbed a reasonable 650MB of hard drive space, and the core of the package added only a couple of processes to our test system, using barely 100MB of RAM in total when idle.

If you're the type who likes to fine-tune your security, you might like to spend some time browsing ESET NOD32's settings, which give you a huge number of tweaks and options.

Another antivirus might allow you to turn email scanning on or off, for instance. ESET allows you to choose which email clients to integrate, which emails to scan (received, sent), which protocols to monitor, what to do when a threat is detected (ignore it, delete it, move it to your choice of folder), and more.

Even if that sounds like the kind of low-level geekiness you'll never use, don't ignore it entirely. If an odd bug or conflict is causing a major ESET NOD32 issue on your system, having the ability to apply system tweaks like this could be key in troubleshooting or even fixing the problem.

Eset Antivirus

Features

ESET NOD32's interface looks a little cluttered, at least initially, with all its status information, buttons, sidebars, links and more. It takes a while to learn the basics, for example that clicking Computer Scan takes you to the Scan page and waits for you to decide what to do, while clicking Scan Your Computer launches a scan immediately.

Eset Antivirus Software Review 2019

Once you figure out the rules, though, the program works much the same as any other antivirus. You can launch a general scan with a click, or run quick or removable drive scans. There's also a powerful option to build custom scan types which examine your chosen locations, and use the scanning rules you prefer.

This flexibility continues almost everywhere you look. Right-click a file in Explorer and ESET NOD32, like everyone else, gives you the option to scan it in the usual way. But you can also check the file reputation to find out more about it; scan the file without cleaning it, just to get an immediate verdict; or manually quarantine a file even if it's not been flagged as malware, a very useful way to safely archive a file you're concerned about.

Whatever scan method we chose, scanning times were fast, particularly after the first run when ESET's Smart Scan ensures that only changed or new files are checked. Detection rates were good, too, with the program picking up all our sample threats, and not raising any false alarms.

URL filtering detected only an average number of malicious URLs, as we've seen in previous reviews. There was a major improvement in false alarms, though, with the package again not warning us about a single legitimate site.

A Device Control feature enables defining what happens when users connect a host of device types to the system: external storage, a USB printer, Bluetooth device, scanner, smart card reader, modems and more. Options include making devices read-only, displaying a warning to users or blocking them entirely. Rules can apply to all or specific devices (‘block all USB storage apart from x, y, z’), some or all user accounts, and the system logs all device connections for review later.

This is a very powerful system, but it's not easy to set up. There's no simple library of prebuilt rules, and no user-friendly visual rule creator. Instead you're mostly choosing technical options from lists and hoping you understand them correctly (check the Help page on the feature). It's very much an experts-only feature.

There's better news with the Tools menu. Here, you can view logs, see what the program has blocked, watch running processes, download ESET's bootable SysRescue cleaning tool, and more.

ESET SysInspector is a highlight, an excellent tool which takes a snapshot of your system and highlights interesting items: running processes, network connections, critical files (HOSTS), important Registry entries and more. It's not for beginners, but if you've used tools like Sysinternals' Process Explorer you'll soon feel at home.

Overall, ESET NOD32 has more features than you might expect for a pure antivirus app. Beginners can ignore the more advanced options and allow the program to do its work, but the real value here is for experts, who'll appreciate the Device Control module and ESET's extreme configurability.

Protection

Eset Antivirus Software Review 2018

ESET proved accurate in our quick malware detection tests, but to get a full picture of its effectiveness we also checked ESET's ratings with the major testing labs.

AV Comparatives' monthly real-world protection tests generally place ESET in the lower mid-range of its test set: not great, but not bad, just somewhere in between. The September 2018 report ranked ESET as 12th place out of 18, for instance, with a protection rate of 98.5%. The February-June summary of five tests also places ESET 12th, with an average protection rate of 99.1%.

AV-Test has reported similarly low or mid-range results in the past, but the company hasn't tested ESET products since 2017.

SE Labs' July-September 2018 home anti-malware report delivers the best results for ESET, with the company ranking third out of 13, just behind Kaspersky and Norton, but outperforming Avira, Trend Micro, Avast, McAfee and more.

The testing labs clearly have a range of views on ESET - which is no surprise as each lab has its own scoring methods and procedures – but the general picture is that it doesn't offer the best protection, or the worst, but sits somewhere in the middle of the pack.

We suspect that this view may undervalue ESET NOD32's abilities, especially for expert users. The labs largely test antivirus packages with the default settings, but if you're able and willing to set up ESET's more advanced features – like the powerful Device Control – then you should improve your security even further.

It's also important that an antivirus won't slow you down, and in this case, we've good news. PassMark's Security Products Performance Benchmarks 2019 report assesses the performance impact of 14 security suites by using 23 key metrics. ESET trampled over most of the competition to reach second place, just behind Norton Security, with even the supposedly lightweight Windows Defender trailing way back in 6th place. The exact results you'll see will depend on your hardware and how you use it, but in general we think ESET NOD32 Antivirus should have minimal performance impact on most systems.

Final verdict

ESET NOD32 could be used by beginners, but its main value is to experienced users who'll appreciate its advanced features and low-level configurability.

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