Antivirus and anti-spyware engine

Innovative scanning engine protects against viruses, spyware, and other malicious agents.

Real-time anti-rootkit protection

Prevents stealth malware (‘rootkits’) that, when loaded by the computer’s OS, are invisible to ordinary scanners.

Silent Firewall

Stops hackers, using heuristic and behavioral analysis and a white list of safe applications.

Antispam

Comprehensive spam and phishing filter, which works as a plug-in to MS Outlook and a generic POP3/IMAP4 proxy for other email clients.

avast! WebRep

Provides website reliability and reputation ratings according to community-provided feedback.

avast! CommunityIQ

Our technology uses a global network of sensors to provide us with data taken (anonymously) from the actual web-browsing experiences of an opt-in group of avast! users. This info is then used to protect all avast! users with the most up-to-date information on viruses and infected websites.
Because of avast! CommunityIQ, avast! has discovered 265,600 infected websites and protected 150,751,206 people from visiting them in the last 30 days.

Boot-time scanner

Scans your computer for infections before the OS can start to activate any viruses beneath it (now applies to Windows 7 and Windows Vista).

avast! SafeZone™

Opens a new (clean) desktop so that other applications don't see what's happening - perfect for secure online shopping and banking - and leaves no traces once it's closed.

AutoSandbox

Prompts users to run suspicious applications in the virtual Sandbox environment.

avast! Sandbox

Provides an extra layer of security for you to run your PC and its applications in a virtual environment – where any attacks are thus targeted (instead of your real PC).

OS supported:

• Windows XP SP2+ 32-bit
• Windows Server 2003, Vista, 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) only RTM versions are supported (Windows 7 SP1 RC is currently also supported)

OS not supported:

• Windows 2000
• Windows XP 64-bit (with any SP installed)
• Windows Server 2003 64-bit

Intelligent Scanner

Reduces the number of required file scans up to 80% through a white list of safe applications. Files identified as safe are not rescanned unless they change.

Silent/Gaming Mode

Automatically detects full-screen applications and disables pop-ups and other notifications without compromising security.

Green computing

Leaves a minimal “footprint” due to its efficient and effective technology.

File System Shield

Real-time scanning of opened/executed files.

Mail Shield

Scans all incoming/outgoing email for malware (a special plug-in is used for MS Outlook).

Web Shield

Scans all visited web pages, downloaded files, and java scripts. Thanks to the intelligent stream scanning feature, the Web Shield doesn't slow your web browsing.

P2P Shield/IM Shield

Checks files downloaded via P2P programs and while using IM or “chat” programs.

Network Shield

Protects against network-based viruses with two main components: a URL blocker for malicious URLs, and a lightweight intrusion-detection system.

Script Shield

Detects malicious scripts hidden in web pages and prevents them from hijacking and potentially damaging your computer.

Behavior Shield

Stops ‘zero-day’ threats and unknown malware before virus definitions have been obtained.

64-bit support

Supports the 64-bit architecture platforms of Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

Heuristics engine

Proactively finds malware undetectable with normal definitions and virus signatures.

Code emulator

Uses dynamic translation (a method much faster than traditional emulation) for both generic unpacking and within the heuristics engine.

Automatic processing

Infected files are processed automatically, without requiring user instructions.

Smart virus definition updates

Incremental updating minimizes the size of regular update files.

Fast application of updates

New format for the virus definition file means faster updates and reduces demand on CPU/memory, for uninterrupted computing.

Multi-threaded scanning optimization

Allows the splitting of large files between cores, which accelerates the scanning process on new multi-core CPUs and makes avast! run even faster.

Wake-up/Scheduled scanning

Schedule scanning at night or whenever you don’t need to use your PC.

Command-line scanner

Runs a scan directly from the command line.