Every computer user know that an antivirus is compulsory to secure Windows. But, there is no guarantee that it’ll detect all malware. There are chances that your antivirus may fail to detect few malware, despite being updated regularly. This is where on-demand scanners will help you. There are many well known on-demand antivirus softwares and one among them is HitmanPro. HitmanPro is different from other routine on-demand scanners. It uses unique multi-engine cloud scanning technology to detect and remove threats within no time.

The interface of HitmanPro is too simple and you’ll just find two buttons, Next (with a dropdown option) and Settings, to proceed further.

Scan :

HitmanPro 3.6 uses a very complex scanning technology which is a combination of 4 different scanning engines (G Data, IKARUS, Emsisoft and Dr. Web) and cloud technology. Actually, till previous version (3.5) there were 5 different scan engines, but Prevx engine has been dropped from latest version 3.6 (which was released at the end of December). But, still 4 engines are more than enough to find malware accurately.

HitmanPro offers 3 different types of scans :

  1. Default Scan : Hard disk drivers and your whole drive where Windows is installed, will be scanned for malware. In default scan, tracking cookies and leftovers of malware which remain on your computer due to partial cleaning (remnant scan), will also be cleaned.
  2. Quick Scan : Only important areas will be scanned. Cleaning of tracking cookies and remnant scan are not included in Quick Scan.
  3. Early Warning Score : This scan is mainly oriented towards expert users and hence it is disabled by default. So, if you want to use this scan, then you have to enable it by going into Settings.

    Early Warning Score will give technical info to experts to analyze

In each of the above scans, HitmanPro will analyze the files with the information available in the cloud. If it comes across an unknown file, then it’ll compress it and upload it to the cloud to confirm its status.

Compression will be done to reduce the upload size

Scan speeds are another important criteria of security softwares. HitmanPro scans your system at blazing speeds. On my test system (1GB RAM and Pentium 4 processor), Default Scan and Early Warning Score scans were finished within 15 minutes and Quick Scan didn’t even took 2 minutes. If your PC has better specs, then you’ll see much faster scans than mine.

Internet speed is one factor that influences the scan speeds. If you have high speed internet then, unknown files will be uploaded quickly and scans will finish soon. If you have slow internet, then most of the time will be wasted in uploading files to the cloud. But, what’s good about HitmanPro is, if an unknown file is marked as safe after uploading to the cloud, then it’ll be whitelisted and that file won’t be uploaded in further scans. Hence, your scan times will decrease as you scan regularly.

Settings :

Now, let us see what settings are offered to customize HitmanPro. When you click on Settings button on the mainscreen, you’ll find different tabs like shown below.

Settings tab will let you customize how HitmanPro will work. You can enable/disable automatic upload to scan cloud, scanning for tracking cookies, remnants of malware etc. Under Scan tab, you’ll find scheduler, which lets you to enable scheduled scan. There are other usual tabs like License, History (Lists quarantined items) and Proxy, but at the end you’ll find the Advanced tab with some interesting settings.

Embed your VirusTotal public API to integrate into HitmanPro

As you can see there is an option to integrate VirusTotal (a popular multi-antivirus web scanner) into HitmanPro. This is very useful to get further advice, if you think HitmanPro advice isn’t enough. Also, from version 3.6 Early Warning Score scanning is disabled by default and you can enable it from the advanced tab.

Conclusion :

Pros :

  • Lightweight installer (around 6 MB) and works well with both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
  • No updates are necessary, as scanning uses up to date in-the-cloud information.
  • Blazing fast scan speeds.
  • Integration of Virustotal will make it easy for you to clear any doubts in case of suspicious files.
  • Behavioral scanner will detect malware if internet isn’t available.

Cons :

  • Didn’t find any major drawbacks, except for the fact that it is heavily dependent on internet to work at its full power.

HitmanPro is a solid second opinion scanner. Not just second opinion it’ll also give you a third opinion if you want, by using VirusTotal. It has many ideal qualities – Light weight, no updates needed, multi-antivirus engines, on-demand behavior scanner, blazing fast scans etc. I recommend you to try the 30-day trial version. You can even use it after 30 days, but malware removal feature will not be available. To remove malware with Hitman after 30 days you have to buy it. So, what are you waiting for? Download HitmanPro now!

Download : HitmanPro

Giveaway

Thanks to surfright, we are giving away 10 Licenses of HitmanPro to readers of Avinashtech. Just follow the simple rules below to enter in this draw.

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