The service offers a number of unique features that make it a great choice for personal and business use, though the free plan is how many users encounter Malwarebytes.
Protection for Home and Work
They usually specialize in one or the other, while most antivirus services offer protection for business and personal devices. Not Malwarebytes. From a free antivirus service that can scan your PC for threats to enterprise plans that can protect thousands of users, Malwarebytes offers a plan for almost any purpose.
The personal service includes all of the core features an antivirus should have. That includes real-time protection on your desktop and in your browser, as well as protections against ransomware and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs).
In addition, Malwarebytes offers Browser Guard and Privacy. Browser Guard focuses on securing your browser with scam detection, an ad blocker and protection against third-party data trackers. Privacy, meanwhile, gives you access to a VPN with servers in over 30 countries so you can protect your online privacy.
The business service offers protection for the smallest teams and the largest enterprises. In addition to the core malware protection, the business service also allows you to isolate and analyze incidents, protect servers, rollback ransomware attacks and manage your protection with a cloud management console.
The Malwarebytes Katana Engine
Malwarebytes Premium is powered by the Katana Engine, which improves threat detection, response time and performance compared to earlier versions. It comes with signature-less behavioral detection, which can pick up on malware that usually bypasses antivirus protection by analyzing program behavior.
The greatest improvement comes in performance, however. Malwarebytes boasts up to a 50% cut in system resource usage during scans, and independent testing backs that up. On standard and high-end PCs, Malwarebytes is much faster than the industry average.
The Malwarebytes Katana Engine is the heart of the service. Whether you use the business or personal service, with or without add-ons, you’ll have access to the same protection.
Free Antivirus Protection
Malwarebytes made a name for itself with its free antivirus service, which is still available today. It uses the same threat detection and mitigation engine as the main service, but with some key differences. Most importantly, the free plan doesn’t include real-time protection or scheduled scans. Instead, it allows you to scan your computer on demand for any threats. If it finds a threat, the free version will remove it from your PC or Mac.
In addition, Malwarebytes offers free protection against unwanted programs like adware, as well as browser protection to filter out malicious websites. The free service is free forever, though it has lost some of its luster over the past few years with several other free antivirus programs making their way to the market.
