Total Defense Antivirus: Features, Pricing & More in 2023
In the world of digital security, Total Defense Antivirus has marked a significant position with its robust features and affordable pricing. This comprehensive Internet security suite doesn’t just stop at providing basic antivirus protection. It goes the extra mile by offering parental control, cloud-based backup and more to ensure your online safety. Let’s delve into our in-depth analysis of this solution.
Understanding the Total Defense Pricing Structure
To begin with, Total Defense offers a yearly subscription costing $79.99. This entitles you to five licenses, along with 10GB of hosted online storage for your cloud backups. Comparable in pricing to brands like K7 Ultimate Security, Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete, Bitdefender, ESET Internet Security, and Trend Micro, Total Defense seems to offer a better deal considering the number of licenses and storage provided.
However, unlike some security suites, Total Defense doesn’t provide an option to choose the number of subscriptions. Each protection tier comes with a specific number of licenses. The standalone antivirus is available as a three-pack for $49.99 per year. For 10 licenses, there’s an upgrade option to Total Defense Ultimate Internet Security, priced at $99.99 per year.
The Total Defense Guarantee
One unique benefit of a Total Defense subscription is its virus-free guarantee that becomes apparent during the installation process. If you sign up for automatic renewal, and a particularly crafty malware attack bypasses the product’s security, causing infestation on your computer, Total Defense support experts will remotely log in and fix the problem. If they fail, the company will refund your money. This guarantee is also offered by other security solutions like McAfee, Norton, Check Point ZoneAlarm Extreme Security, and a few others.
User Interface of Total Defense
In Total Defense, you’ll find three main panels for status, security, and devices. When you upgrade to the suite, these panels remain but are resized to accommodate two new panels: Family Protection and Backup. Each panel features a line-art icon in a different bold color, resulting in an attractive overall effect.
Exploring the Shared Features with Essential Antivirus
As a security product, Total Defense incorporates a variety of features in its basic antivirus product. Some companies may cram in a multitude of features, but Total Defense Essential Anti-Virus sticks to the essentials.
We base our analysis on the regular reports from four independent antivirus testing labs: AV-Test Institute(Opens in a new window), AV-Comparatives, SE Labs, and MRG-Effitas. Each lab uses its own testing process and scoring system, which helps evaluate the effectiveness of antivirus products.
In our tests, Total Defense excelled in on-sight elimination of 95% of samples and achieved an overall score of 9.5. In comparison, Norton 360 Deluxe scored 9.9, while McAfee and Webroot scored 9.7.
Total Defense’s Web Protection
Total Defense also offers protection against dangerous and fraudulent websites. It effectively blocked access to 83% of the samples and quarantined another 15% for a total of 98% protection.
However, the threat landscape is not limited to malware-hosting sites. Phishing is another prevalent risk where fraudsters attempt to trick you into logging into a fake site, thereby gaining access to your account. Total Defense also safeguards you against such phishing scams.
Enhanced Family Protection
The Family Protection component in Total Defense serves as a helpful parental control system. It functions based on profiles you set up for each user account and filters content based on the selected age range.
The improved Family Protection feature also blocks secure anonymizing proxy sites, a loophole previously exploited by tech-savvy kids to bypass content filters. However, the system is still not perfect as it only filters content for recognized browsers, leaving a gap for off-brand browsers.
Total Defense’s Cloud Backup System
Total Defense Premium provides 10GB of cloud storage with your subscription, which increases to 25GB if you upgrade to the top-tier Ultimate suite.
Although the backup system is simple to use, it lacks features like multi-versioning, idle-time backup, and in-place restoration that many users find essential.
Considering System Performance
Total Defense is impressively light on system resources. We observed no significant slowdown during boot time or file operations, showing that Total Defense has minimal impact on system performance.
Concluding Thoughts
Total Defense Premium Internet Security offers a solid mix of essential antivirus features, parental control, and cloud backup. While there are areas the software can improve on, considering its pricing structure, it provides good value for money. However, if you require a full-featured parental control system, you may want to consider other options like Kaspersky or Norton.
Pros
- Very good scores in our hands-on tests
- Backup system includes 10GB of cloud storage
- Improved parental control system
Cons
- Few results from independent antivirus labs
- Parental control is still easily defeated
- No option for local backup
Total Defense Premium Internet Security starts with essential antivirus protection and adds parental control and cloud backup. The price is nice, but you’re better off paying a little more for more security.
