October 11, 2011

Doctor Web —a Russian developer of IT security software—unveils new single-user Dr.Web products for Windows — Dr.Web Anti-virus 7.0 and Dr.Web Security Space 7.0. The products incorporate many technological and functional upgrades, resulting in increased scan speed, improved reliability, and enhanced virus protection options and customization.

In order to improve Dr.Web’s performance, its architecture was significantly modified: new services were introduced and the performance of all components was optimized. Doctor Web's developers made improvements to the scanner, completely revamping its look and feel. The most important innovation enables the scanner to perform multi-thread scanning where tasks are distributed between the CPU cores. As a consequence, the overall performance of the new anti-virus has grown substantially.

The products feature the Dr.Web Control Service, responsible for controlling all anti-virus components and their interaction as well as for retrieving statistics and scheduling updates. With this service, you can take advantage of the Anti-virus network feature, which comes in handy for home and small corporate networks.

The Dr.Web anti-virus network works as client-server software and provides remote control over the Dr.Web anti-virus. For example, if computers within a local area network run Dr.Web 7.0, a user can enter a protection password on one computer and control the anti-virus software on another PC in the same network. The control service enables users to perform a wide range of tasks: retrieve anti-virus statistics and log files, check the virus database versions, enable/ disable anti-virus modules, view/change their settings and replace a key file or serial number. The new feature is available to customers using Dr.Web Security Space.

To improve the reliability of Dr.Web self-protection, a new feature enables the anti-virus to automatically restore its components. A specially designed local repository stores the reference version of all components used to quickly restore their integrity if component files have been damaged or deleted.

In addition, you can now define a single master password to protect all the anti-virus settings. Whenever a user attempts to access general Dr.Web settings, individual component settings, or tries to disable a component, they will be prompted to enter the password.

The protective features of Dr.Web software have been enhanced with the capability to check mail and Internet traffic transferred via an SSL-encrypted connection (SMTPS/POP3S/IMAP4S/HTTPS). This feature is enabled by default for all programs that use the system certificate store: Microsoft applications (Internet Explorer, Outlook, Outlook Express, etc.), Google Chrome, and Safari. If necessary, a user can expand this list to include other popular applications such as Opera, Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird, and The Bat!.

Dr.Web 7.0 products use a new traffic interception hook, Dr.Web Net Filter for Windows, which has superseded the Dr.Web Winsock Provider Hook. The new hook performs tasks for two anti-virus components—SpIDer Gate and SpIDer Mail—and intercepts application traffic as well as the traffic of system services and drivers, which in turn increases the reliability of real-time anti-virus protection.

Dr.Web firewall has also been modernized. Its new driver supports multiprocessor/multicore systems. This feature is especially important if the protected machine runs programs that make extensive use of traffic such as BitTorrent clients. Now the firewall can control data transfers with maximum efficiency and doesn't lower the transfer speed. In addition, in the Statistics tab, users can now end system processes and block and unblock connections. The usability of the interface to create complex filtering rules has been improved.

Lastly, a separate Dr.Web Anti-rootkit Service—a universal subsystem for neutralizing active and complex threats—has been implemented in the new products. The new service uses a specially designed Dr.Web Anti-rootkit API and improved routines to detect active infections.

Dr.Web 7.0 is available in the download section on Doctor Web's site.

• Upgrade from version 6.0 to 7.0
• Ask for 30-day trial
• Buy Dr.Web 7.0.