Due to the fast growing amount of malware out there in the wild our virus definition files grow fast as well. We monitored the situation with our Updates very closely. We realise that users of the free Avira AntiVir Personal had issues fetching the Updates in time recently and did come up with a few ideas how we could solve the problem and to better satisfy the needs of our users.

Two of the results are getting realized today: First, we switch from our current virus definition files (called iVDF) to a new format called nVDF. iVDF consists of 4 VDF files, while nVDF uses at least 32 files – we need to transfer less data for updating our virus definitions effectively in the future.

This means that we need to deliver about 25 MByte to every Avira installation starting today for switching to the new update system. This might lead to some delays for some users, especially for the users of our free version Avira AntiVir Personal. Just to get an idea about what we’re talking here: More than 100.000.000 Users are trying to get the update more or less on the same day. That is more than 2.5 Petabytes (or 2,500 Terabytes) of traffic.

To ease the bandwidth bottleneck, we decided to additionally use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). We were first testing a CDN built up by our current Internet service provider. Shortly after activating the CDN, the redirectors – which redirect the update requests to servers close to the users location – were overloaded and couldn’t answer the requests anymore. The situation was solved a little later on, but the CDN isn’t big enough yet to spread this huge update in time. So we decided to switch to a global player in the CDN market to deliver the update.

We hope that the data is transfered much faster this way so also the users of free Avira AntiVir Personal can enjoy their security solution without any problems: After this Update the situation will get much better for the users of Avira AntiVir Personal.

N.B.: Users of commercial Avira products like Avira AntiVir Premium, Avira Premium Security Suite or Avira AntiVir Professional don’t face any of these problems as they access our servers with reserved bandwidth.

Dirk Knop
Technical Editor

The Professional Edition of AntiVir 9 will introduce a new feature which we have called Configuration Profiles. The idea behind this feature is to better support mobile users. Probably you have faced the problem yourself when running an enterprise antivirus: as long as you are located in the company the product should update from a server in the Intranet and (in most cases) the security policy is very restrictive. However, when you are at home or somewhere at a customer or in the hotel, updates should take place from Avira servers and the security policy might be less restrictive: there’s no help desk available but you urgently need to install something etc.

The new Configuration Profiles now offer an effective and flexible way to configure AntiVir Professional according to these needs. The feature allows you to define up to 3 individual configuration sets called a Profile. A Profile includes all AntiVir options. For example you can define different update servers, activate or deactivate mail or web protection (e.g. in the company the user is protected by a gateway, at home or at the customers he’s not protected), etc. This allows an administrator to configure the system according to the individual situation.

Configuration Profiles can be switched automatically by the detected Gateway.

Each Profile (configuration) can be set active by an automatic rule. A rule can be:

• Use profile it the current default gateway or the default gateways MAC address matches
• Use profile if no other rule fits (default rule)
• Do not use a rule

If a rule is set accordingly AntiVir will automatically switch the configuration options in use depending on the current location of the notebook.

Configuration Profile can be also switched manually (not recommended as most users will ‘forget’ to do so):

Users can select the Configuration Profile manually, too.

Of course Configuration Profiles are also supported by the Avira Management Console for centralized management. The administrator can define the configuration sets and the rules but – obviously – he cannot switch between the Profiles.

We think that this is a somehow complex but useful feature in enterprise environments. Btw, if you do not want to deal with these profiles you can continue working the old way, of course.

Thomas Salomon
Manager Windows Software Development