Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is a collection of cybersecurity services for home professionals looking for a solution against data loss and cyberattacks.
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VIPRE
Score 9.5 out of 10
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VIPRE (formerly known as ThreatTrack Security) is an antivirus solution, now part of J2 Global's portfolio of cloud offerings and applications since the February 2018 acquisition.
The imaging capability seems to be solid [with Acronis True Image], although I have not had to recover a drive yet so cannot compare. The logs tell me when it is (and isn't) working. The "Cloud Replication" that is supposed to simultaneously replicate the local backup image is perfectly awful and the months of tech support ended with them telling me I had a "VSS issue" on a brand new workstation and that I should just create a separate cloud image. After months of it taking 3-4 DAYS to run, IF it worked, and then failing altogether, I discontinued it. It was even logging (running?) under another separate critical files backup, and forced to use the same encryption password. Setting up a new one failed. The cloud backup of my critical files is still running at kb/sec speeds. The ransomware protection hasn't caught anything yet to my knowledge, and consumes a lot of resources. Changing the settings takes at least 10 minutes to log into the cloud. Cloud storage is tiny and a push to get you to pay more. Will not be renewing.
Robust protection with a small footprint. Catches all malware and viruses, while respecting the exclusions put in place by our organization. Pricing was very aggressive compared to other products. Great management application, where you can manage the installations and even update third-party apps on those machines from that portal. Great product for a great price.
Some features have actually become more complicated over the years. One that comes to mind is creating a backup plan that can execute daily to an external USB media that is changed daily (older versions would back up to the, for example, "F" drive regardless of which drive was attached - newer versions identify each drive uniquely, and a backup task created with a given external drive will fail due to the lack of media presence if the drive is replaced).
Error messages could be less cryptic.
Support turnaround time and live assistance could be faster.
When using older versions of Outlook I have seen the plugin cause sluggish behavior and hangs, in 2007 and 2010 versions specifically.
For some business applications, there are .dll's and libraries and application .exe's that can be misidentified as virus or trojans. While it is fairly easy to whitelist these once discovered, new implementors should be aware that they will need to carefully look through their initial virus scan reports to find and whitelist these items.
VIPRE is very easy to use and administer. You have a lot of functionality from the server on what you can do with the clients. It has proved useful when I can't access a client any other way. I can reboot the computer from the server and then usually get back into that machine.
Beyond a single instance, I haven't had to approach Acronis' support. I needed a new key following the death of my previous workstation, and they rapidly supplied it. I've heard from colleagues that they've quickly answered any questions that've been asked. If I need something, I'll generally frequent FAQ pages first, although Acronis actually has instructional videos to help users get started, which is forward-thinking. Great software that fills a vital niche for Windows systems.
VIPRE support is usually pretty quick. Sometimes you have to get a lot of information to send back so they can see the issue. This has not been too bad and I understand why it's needed. VIPRE also has a free rescue tool that is very useful and easy to use. There have been others but VIPRE seems to keep theirs updated. It's my go-to even outside of work.
Acronis True Image is the perfect program when it comes to backing up data. It supports all kinds of backup like file and/or folder backup and has a better and easier to use interface than the 2 products. I also like that I have the option to backup data in local drives also instead of the cloud only. And lastly, it supports Partition backup also instead of only files and/or folders.
We got a chance to buy AVG Business edition and we tried to install that throughout our organization and most specifically to our important systems but it was not compatible with a majority of them and we found AVG as high-demand software with a mediocre speed of action and more pricing. So in comparison to AVG, VIPRE is good in all aspects.
The Windows version is generally reliable and only ran into one issue thus far. Restores are easy and there are many features. On MacOS, it's a completely different story. There is significant resource leakage related to the updater app that can bog down part of a CPU core continuously until it is disabled. The mobile backup feature also needs to be disabled via UNIX command line or CPU usage will go up when a mobile device on the same network like an iPad or iPhone's screen is turned on.
