Quick Heal Technologies, a Pune-based global cybersecurity solutions provider, has rolled out the latest version of its antivirus solution with advanced predictive threat detection and fraud protection. Version 26 of Quick Heal Total Security has an in-built AI-powered security assistant called SIA (Security Intelligent Assistant) that provides users with explanations about security alerts and fixes in simple, jargon-free language.

Providing step-by-step walkthroughs and quick solutions through friendly, human-like conversations “ensures that cybersecurity becomes accessible to users of all technical backgrounds…” the company said in a press note on Wednesday, November 12. The newly unveiled antivirus solution also comes with predictive threat-hunting technology, AI-powered anti-fraud tool, dark web monitoring, metaProtect integration, and performance booster. It is available for Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows 8 users with support for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Story continues below this ad Quick Heal Total Security version 26’s launch marks 30 years of the company, which was one of the first Indian cybersecurity firms to go public in 2016. “When we started in 1996-98, we were seeing a few thousand viruses per week. Now, we are seeing more than half a million viruses per day.

So we started developing in-house tools that will help us automate things, because we cannot analyse so many viruses per day manually,” Dr Sanjay Katkar, joint managing director at Quick Heal Technologies, said at a launch event held in Delhi on Wednesday. “In spite of these threats and protections in place, the focus has now shifted toward broader online scams. Since the pandemic, almost everything has moved online — from ordering food and shopping on e-commerce platforms to applying for passports and other government services.

We now rely heavily on digital platforms and are required to share personal data across various agencies and companies to access these services. This widespread sharing and storage of data has created new risks and vulnerabilities,” he further said. When asked if the version 26 antivirus can protect against sophisticated spyware hacking campaigns, Katkar told The Indian Express, “We have this mechanism of crawling the internet for any spyware that is being released free of cost or for anybody to download.

And version 26 offers protection against such spyware from the day it is released. However, there is a world of paid spyware such as Pegasus where no researcher has access to it.

Then it becomes very difficult to pre-emptively protect against such spyware. ” “Unless, one of our users gets affected by the spyware.

Then we immediately come to know that there is malicious activity and we release a patch or ask the user to download the OS patch,” the senior executive added. Story continues below this ad List of features and tools Besides its SIA assistant, Quick Heal Total Security version 26 comes with the following features: – GoDeep. AI: It is predictive threat hunting technology, where the AI engine learns from millions of historical threats and evolves in order to protect against zero-day attacks, where the security vulnerability is not yet known to the software provider.

“By monitoring programme behaviour and blocking suspicious activity instantly, GoDeep. AI protects users from threats that haven’t been discovered yet,” the company said. – Antifraud.

AI: It offers real-time protection against fraud by blocking fraudulent apps, websites, fake UPI requests, and banking fraud calls. This feature is also capable of detecting phishing links and messages before users click on them.

It continuously learns from Quick Heal’s KYC-verified data to ensure higher accuracy. – Dark Web Monitoring 2.

0: This tool carries out comprehensive surveillance of the dark web and auto-detects users’ registered email addresses or other sensitive information if it appears on the dark web. Story continues below this ad – metaProtect integration: It is a single, unified dashboard that allows users to monitor laptops, phones, and tablets as well as trigger security scans and receive real-time breach alerts.

“The simplified sign-up process eliminates the need for product keys, making advanced security management accessible and effortless,” Quick Heal said. – Performance Booster: This feature allows users to restore deleted files with Select/Deselect options.

It also offers enhanced Backup and Restore functionalities that allows users to delete old backups and free up on-device storage without compromising security.