The security company thought getting tested was worth the cost. The labs though the product was important enough to test. The last tests I recorded for Qihoo were one from SE Labs in 2018 and one from AV-Test Institute in 2017. Alas, Qihoo doesn’t currently participate in testing by any of the labs I follow. The top products get high marks in many different tests by numerous labs. I carefully track each antivirus product's scores from four independent antivirus testing labs around the world. An initial scan with Avira took 105 minutes, while a repeat took just five. Kaspersky Security Cloud Free, for example, brought an 80-minute scan down to eight minutes for a rescan. That’s decent, but others have exhibited significantly more optimization. A repeat scan with Qihoo brought the scan time down to 46 minutes. Some antivirus products perform a kind of optimization during the first scan, making subsequent scans run faster-sometimes much faster.
You can schedule a full or quick scan to run daily, weekly, or monthly. As with any antivirus, you should run a full scan after installation, to catch any lurking malware.Īfter you complete a scan, the program suggests setting up a regular schedule. The scan checks system settings, common programs, running processes, and startup items first, then goes on to scan all files. When I ran a full anti-malware scan, it took 85 minutes, about 20 minutes more than the current average. A Full Check on my virtual machine test system finished in just a few minutes and found a variety of things to fix.Ĭlearly the Security Check included in Full Check was a quick scan, just looking for active threats, as it finished quickly and found nothing. Clicking the big Check Now button runs six scans: System Repair, Security Threat, System Performance Enhancement, Bootup Speed Optimization, Registry Clean, and System Junk. Qihoo's main window focuses on what it calls Full Check. The best antivirus tools give you maximum security without impacting performance. And don’t even think about using the even-less-secure Performance mode.
Initially it’s set to Balanced, but in this mode Qihoo doesn’t bother to use its Avira and KunPeng antivirus engines.Īnybody who uses this product absolutely must crank protection up to the Security level, as I did for testing. Clicking this icon reveals that the product's protection comes in three modes: Performance, Balanced, and Security. I enabled detection of these programs, which, while not actively malicious, are still undesirable.Ī large icon at the top-left corner displays the legend “Protection: On” when everything is configured correctly. Flipping through the settings, I noticed that detection of PUPs (potentially unwanted programs) was off. There’s an extension available for Yandex as well, for those countries where Yandex is popular.
I also made sure to install browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Edge. Even though the mini-installer grabbed the very latest program version, the program did find some newer signatures to install.
For testing purposes, I ignored them all.Īfter installing the product on my test system, I checked for malware signature updates. I imagine Qihoo gets some small affiliate income when you choose to install these. The installer also prompts you to install a plethora of unrelated “popular software.” Programs offered include Skype, Line, WhatsApp, OpenOffice, and WinRAR, among others.
The mini-installer downloads and executes the latest version of the full install program. Installing this product is quick and simple.
This free software piles on tons of bonus features, but those features can’t make up for the fact that its core antivirus isn’t up to par. Alas, Qihoo 360 Total Security isn’t one of them. You need security software that keeps up, and you don’t necessarily have to pay, as many free antivirus utilities are quite effective. Malware coders keep refining their data-stealing Trojans, computer-controlling bots, and file-encrypting ransomware. Anyone? Let’s hope all hands are still down. Raise your hand if you think it’s fine to go without antivirus protection on your PC. Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Software.