ZoneAlarm is known for its affordable security products such as ZoneAlarm Free Firewall, ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus and ZoneAlarm Internet Security. Now a newly designed product ZoneAlarm Next Gen is being given away for free in the beta version. Anyone can install it on their system and claim a free license for one full year. This software protects your PC using a state of the art antivirus, anti-ransomware and web security.
Personally, I am loving it as it uses the same antivirus engine as the security software giant Kaspersky and it does not really hog the system resources. You won’t even feel like it is running in the background and providing you all the protection.
If you have some files that it is detecting falsely (false positives) then you can add an exception to those files so that ZoneAlarm Next Gen stops scanning them. Here is how it is done:
- Launch ZoneAlarm Next Gen by double-clicking on its notification area icon.
- Click on the Antivirus in the ZoneAlarm Next Gen window.
- This step is optional, but if your file (that you want to add to the exceptions list) is being detected as a malware as soon as you download it or copy it to your PC, then you should disable the antivirus first. For disabling the antivirus just click on the toggle switch on the top.
- Click on the Exceptions to open the list of exceptions. Then click on the Add button to select and add your file to the list.
- Go back to the Antivirus section and re-enable it by clicking on the toggle switch.
I had to use this method when downloading an open-source tool from github. I had to stop the antivirus, download the software and then add it to the exception. However, we should be very careful and add only a known-good file to the exception.