If you have ever spent time watching shows on National Geographic, then you might know how baby elephants get the protection of all the adult elephants surrounding them. In other words, the baby elephants get the herd protection – the larger the herd, the better is the protection. The anti-malware software herdProtect follows the same logic for protecting your PC from harmful and malicious programs. A malicious file may be able to slip under the radar of one anti-malware program, but it cannot avoid detection by others. This way the herdProtect anti-malware protects you with a herd of around 68 different anti-malware and anti-virus engines.
The herdProtect anti-malware can be downloaded from the herdProtect website. The download is a small installer of less than 3 megabytes. After the installation, you can launch it from the Start Menu or desktop shortcuts. You must be online for it to work as it has to access the herdProtect cloud network for scanning your files. To start the scan, all you have to do is click on the Scan button and it will go to work right-away.
It collects a list of all the running processes, services and items in critical area (such a start up programs). Then it checks the herdProtect cloud network for matching signatures. If a match is not found, then the file is uploaded to the cloud for getting results. The whole process takes more than half an hour and can become annoying being very slow. So instead of waiting for it to finish, you should go and finish your daily chores, walk your dog and make a hot cup of coffee.
When the scanning and analysis is finished, it displays a report about all the processes, services and other items. A brief summary of how many files, how many processes and how many startup items were scanned is displayed at the top. Then it shows the detected malicious files divided into categories – adware, inconclusive detection (suspicious files) and unclassified malware. You can see how many anti-malware engines have flagged a file or process as malicious. You can expand the details for each process to see which anti-virus engines have flagged a file as a threat.
In addition to the GUI interface, it also comes with a command line scanner (but does not create any shortcuts for it). The command line scanner can be used to scan for malware using the same cloud scan in three modes – scan processes/modules & ASEPs, scan processes/modules, ASEPs & critical areas, and scan processes/modules, ASEPs & deep critical areas.
Next question that comes to mind is – what to do if it does detect malware on your PC? The herdProtect anti-malware gives you no options to remove any threats detected. But what you can do is download an good anti-virus that is capable of detecting the threats from the report, download and install it on your computer and remove the threat that it finds.
The herdProtect anti-malware is a cloud based scanner which may be helpful in having a second opinion about your Windows PC, but it should not be taken as a substitute for a regular anti-virus product. It can scan your files using 68 anti-virus engines, but gives no options to cure or remove the detected threats. It is slower in performance compared to Phrozen VirusTotal Uploader which makes use of the Google VirusTotal API.
You can get herdProtect Anti-Malware Scanner from http://www.herdprotect.com/.