Emsisoft Anti-Malware may not be as popular as AVG, Avira or Avast but it is well known for its superb detection taking the lead in a couple of independent tests. The first thing I like about Emsisoft is that their company is not too big which made it possible for me to speak to Christian Mairoll, the CEO of Emsisoft a couple of times over Skype. Christian is definitely a very friendly and professional person. I got to know about the major update on Emsisoft Anti-Malware few weeks back and this version claims to have taken more than one year in development to completely rewrite for multi-core optimizations which makes it faster, safer and more resource-saving than ever.
I was excited to review the new Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 and finally I had the time to do it today. The current (6.0.0.46) setup installer file size is at 106MB while when I benchmark the performance was an older build at 96.5MB. The design remains familiar while there are dozens of technical improvements.
Launching Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 will bring you to the Security Status window showing you the status of File Guard, Behavior Blocker and Surf Protection. It also tells you the last time you performed a malware scan and also an update.
Next at the menu is Scan PC where you can select four different type of scan profiles. Quick Scan is for scanning all active running programs which took merely 19 seconds on my test system. Smart Scan does the same as quick scan but includes programs and Windows files. The Deep Scan is the slowest because it thoroughly scans all files on all hard drives. Finally the last scan profile is Custom where you can select what type of objects to scan and also the settings. At the bottom you can add files to whitelist to prevent Emsisoft Anti-Malware from scanning the file and also action to automatically perform when scan has been completed.
The Quarantine window simply lists all the files that Emsisoft Anti-Malware has been quarantined so you can easily submit file to Emsisoft for analysis, re-scan again on newer virus definitions, manually add, restore or delete the quarantined files.
Logging is an important tool for tracing procedures but normally it is not easy to go through logs as they contain too much information. Emsisoft Anti-Malware made it clear and simple by dividing into 3 different log windows (Guard, Quarantine and Update).
The Guard window allows easy fine tuning or removal of behavior rules. The Behavior Blocker is enabled by default and watches 19 different types of activities such as possible backdoor, spyware, hijacker, worm, dialer, keylogger, trojan, injection, patching, invisible installation, rootkit, mouse and keyboard simulation, modifying of HOSTS file and etc.
Finally, the Configuration area allows you to configure the antivirus’ global options such as the Guard Settings, Scheduled Scans, Updates, Automatic Update, Logging, Permission and License. From the License tab, you can opt to switch to Freeware mode where the real-time protection is disabled and you can only use Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 for scanning and cleaning.
Since the real-time guard is disabled for freeware mode, logically Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 shouldn’t have any process running in background. I noticed that the a2service.exe process is still running even on freeware mode which may take up unnecessary memory usage. To disable the a2service.exe, click on the Windows Start button, type services.msc and hit enter. Look for Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 – Service on the list and double click on it. At the Startup type drop down menu, select Manual and click Apply. This will prevent a2service.exe process from automatically starting whenever Windows is booted up.
Do note that manually running Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 will trigger a2service.exe process and it remains active until you restart your computer. To manually terminate the a2service.exe process, either click the Stop button from the Services window, or run command prompt as administrator and type the command net stop a2AntiMalware. If UAC is enabled and you do not run command prompt as administrator, you will get “System error 5 has occurred. Access is denied” error.
Comparing Emsisoft Anti-Malware v5 with v6, most of the benchmark numbers has improved tremendously. Only the time taken to boot up Windows and file compression has increased a bit.
Numbers bolded in blue means improved while red is worsen
Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0.0.46 also passed the most recent single product flash test performed by Malware Research Group detecting a perfect 50 out of 50 samples. False alerts has also been significantly reduced because of its internal analysis system. Emsisoft has recently revealed a creative referral rewards program where you can easily get a 1 month or 6 months extension of your license for free.
Emsisoft is definitely heading the right direction with improved performance while maintaining its top notch detection. Christian Mairoll has generously sponsored 30 Emsisoft Anti-Malware 6.0 license valid for 1 year to be given away here. Visit our giveaway page to join the raffle.