Bitdefender Total Security 2022 Review - Pros and Cons

Our Editor Review for the New Bitdefender Total Security 2022

Another year, another big update for Bitdefender’s security software suite, and this time we’re looking at new version of Bitdefender Total Security (Bitdefender Total Security 2022).

The interface stays mostly the same, keeping the high visibility and functionality of previous year’s versions, but changing the color palette a bit to stay fresh. In other words, I’d say this is more of a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach.

The top of the dashboard screen gives out personalized tips, like in our example we can see a pop-up advising us to enable ransomware remediation, a feature that will enable extra protection against ransomware encrypting your files. This feature is quite topical if we look at the last 3-4 years of ransomware history, so it’s a pretty valuable part of the package.

Lower we can see the default setup of cards, quick scan, VPN, licensing info – remember that most of this is customizable, so, for example, we can replace this feature here with something more suitable to us.

The cards themselves are fully functional, of course, so “Quick Scan” does exactly what you expect: scans your computer’s most system folders, and neutralizes all potential issues.

Bitdefender’s prefers to give users the option to either go with the default settings in their security software, or to let the user control every aspect of their product, and for the second type of people we have tabs other than dashboard, like the “Protection” tab, for example.

The classic quick scan and system scan are here, but advanced users can also check out the quarantine, to see which files the antivirus deemed unsafe – since that can help fine tune the software’s analysis tools.

The vulnerability scan’s functionality is important for finding out potential exploit points either on your computer or your home network. This can be as innocuous as a missing windows security password, or something a lot more sinister, like a smart lightbulb that’s known to be exploitable for hacker use.

The firewall can allow or restrict internet access for specific applications, as well as create more complex and detailed profiles and settings for your protection. 

Antispam, when given control over your email account, will control white and blacklists of received mail, using a complex analytics for sorting junk mail.

A feature that uses similar cloud-based machine learning is Online Threat Prevention – which prevents your browser from opening links leading to phishing, fraud, and other types of online threats. Sticking with the customizability, Bitdefender also allows you to put trusted websites in the whitelist, or enable and disable different features in the settings.

Advanced Threat Defense is designed to protect against day-one exploits, and generally looks out for suspicious behavior. But, again, keeping with the customizability spirit, you can add applications to the whitelist to exclude them from testing.

The Safe Files block serves to protect you against malware encrypting your data and demanding ransom for your personal files: you can place sensitive data in specified folders which only applications you explicitly trust will be able to access – a really handy feature.

Another tab mostly intended for more advanced users is the Privacy tab. Here we can see the Wallet, which was previously named Password manager. The wallet which keeps your passwords and other sensitive data safe, and fills it in for you when you log in, so you don’t have to remember them.

The File Shredder feature goes over the deleted data on your HDD and overwrites it with blank data, or zeroes. This procedure makes it almost impossible to recover the files afterwards, even with advanced means.

We can see the same VPN feature we saw in the dashboard, once again, it’s great that BitDefender offers it’s own VPN feature, since it’s so handy for getting around georestrictions on content online.

Safepay is still here from last year, a very powerful feature that is essentially a separate browser window with extra protection, that’s meant for making secure online transactions.

Bitdefender Anti-Tracker turns off advertising data collection, protecting you against targeted ads. Keep in mind that this feature requires you to install a plugin in your browser.

The utilities section has been kept mostly the same. It still offers you features for optimizing your boot time, cleaning your storage drives from unnecessary files, and protecting your data in case your computer gets stolen. Great features all around.

Overall, Bitdefender Total Security 2022 looks like more of a maintenance update, which is not a bad thing. The last year’s version was a big jump in feature set and design, so it’s okay that the team is mostly using this years version to iron out the bugs and make the best possible version of their Bitdefender software. It’s actually noticeable that this year’s beta version is a little less buggy than last year, so it’s definitely an improvement. Get up to 70% off Bitdefender products line