When you think about Vikings, ‘protection’ is probably not the first word that comes to mind. However, after using Heimdal Security Thor Premium Home, it might just be. By combining both products, Thor Foresight and Thor Vigilance, Thor Premium Home protects you both proactively and reactively, making sure that your computer is protected, even before it gets infected. This makes sense since Heimdal Security got its name from Heimdallr, the Norse god who keeps watch over the future of Asgard. Like him, this company that was founded in Denmark in 2011 foresees the future of your computer, enabling it to protect itself from cyberattacks before they happen. On top of that, even if your computer is susceptible to becoming infected, Thor Premium Home also offers a decent antivirus with various types of scans that will make sure your equipment stays unharmed.
Thor Premium Home gives you the two sides of the ‘protection coin’. On one hand, you have the reactive protection – Thor Vigilance – and on the other hand, you have the proactive protection – Thor Foresight. In order to provide such a service in a user-friendly manner, Heimdal Security added the two of them into the same program, which in other words, means the same interface.
Installing Heimdal Security Thor Premium Home is quite easy and straightforward – qualities that continue to be present while using the product. When you open the program, you will find Thor Foresight on the left, and Thor Vigilance on the right. In the home tab, you can access general information about both services such as prevented attacks, software updates, number of infections, and files in quarantine, amongst others. Each piece of information has a button below that will send you to a window with more detailed data, making it very easy for you to get a quick understanding of the state of your computer.
However, there is still more to explore. By pressing the menu button on the top right, you will be able to find all the features present on Thor Home Premium and find links that will connect you to important webpages, such as Heimdal’s customer service, the blog, website, and more.
Although you cannot customize your scan, Heimdal Security Thor Premium Home offers a wide variety of scans that you can choose from. Besides the usual ones such as full, quick, and removable drive scans, there are also more specific ones such as the active processes scan, which will try to find infections within the programs running, or the network system scan, which will scan the network mapped folders. This, combined with the possibility of scanning anything with a right-click ensures that most users’ needs are met without requiring customization.
For the review, we ran both the full and quick scans. While we did not notice any slowdown on the computer with either of them, we have to say that the quick scan took way longer than we were expecting. Usually, a quick scan takes around a few minutes, but with Thor Home Premium, it took 43 minutes to finish. Nonetheless, we do not think this is such a bad thing. First of all, since Thor Home Premium protects you all time, the scan is more a double-check than a necessity, which means you don’t need to do it often; secondly, it ran without any problems, and we were able to use the computer like usual; thirdly, Thor Home Premium scans stop when you turn off the computer and automatically restart when it’s turned on again. In other words, the scan was happening, but we totally forgot about it until we got the pop-up saying the scan was finished.
After the scan is done, Thor Home Premium gives you all the details of the infections it found, such as the file name, threat category, and type of infection. Lucky for us, Thor Home Premium did not find any threats, but if it would have, the infected and suspicious files would have stayed in quarantine waiting for our decision on what to do with them, something that can be changed in the settings.
An antivirus isn’t the only thing Heimdal Security Thor Home Premium offers. As mentioned before, Thor Home Premium combines two different products, the antivirus from Thor Vigilance, and all the Thor Foresight features, which is the one that blocks any threat before it gets inside your computer.
The first standout element is the X-Ploit Resilience feature which will not only install apps with one click but also update them automatically without you having to do anything. Although the list only contains around 80 apps, they are the ones that most computers have installed such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, Chrome, Firefox, and Microsoft Silverlight, among others. This feature will check for updates every two hours, and as soon as there is a new one, it will install it in the background.
You also get the DarkLayer Guard, which is a two-way traffic scanning engine that blocks network communication to protect the machine from zero-day exploits, ransomware, data leakage, and more, keeping your computer safe 24/7.
On top of that, you also have the Vector Detection which uses Machine Learning technology to perform an in-depth analysis of all incoming and outgoing HTTP, HTTPS, and DNS traffic in order to detect second-generation malware strains.
However, although Heimdal Security Thor Home Premium makes your computer a fortress when it comes to any type of infection, there are some features missing. Unfortunately, Thor Home Premium does not offer any privacy protection features such as a VPN or data shredding, and besides the software updater, it also doesn’t provide any other types of performance-boosting such as a driver updater or a cleanup. It would be nice to have a little more, even if it didn’t come with the package and we had to buy it in parallel.
Although Thor’s website leads us to believe the product is only available for Windows 7 and above, after a visit to its FAQ, we found that it’s also accessible for macOS 10.13 – High Sierra and above. Unfortunately, that’s where it ends, meaning Thor Home Premium does not support mobile. Nevertheless, one account can work simultaneously on three to ten computers, depending on the license you buy.
The product is very light and does not consume a lot of RAM, only needing 400MB of disk space and 250MB of RAM. You will need, at least, Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 to run it on Windows though.
Heimdal Security Thor Premium Home combines two products into one, but you have the option to buy either Thor Foresight or Vigilance separately. However, for ultimate protection, we advise you to purchase Thor Premium Home.
Since Thor Premium Home’s objective is to deliver a full, stand-alone service, there are no different tiers, and the company does not sell any extra features not included in the license.
The cheapest plan is a one-year license including three computers for $99.95. However, you can also choose between a two-year and three-year plan as well as five or ten computers. For the one-year plan with five devices, you pay $139.95 while double the machines costs $234.95. For the two-year plan, you can buy it for as low as $199.95 for three PCs, $223.95 for five, and $375.95 for ten. Last, but not least, the three-year plan goes for $199.95, $279.95, $469.95 and can be used on three, five, and ten computers respectively. Although $469.95 may seem like a lot, it actually translates into roughly $15.60 for each piece of equipment per year, which is a discount of 47% per computer compared to the cheapest plan.
On top of that, Thor Home Premium lets you try its product to your heart’s content with its 30-day free trial combined with a 30-day money-back guarantee, which enables you to try the software for 60 days. You can pay for the software by using Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and, if you switch to manual renewal, PayPal.
Although computer protection is the most critical part when looking for an internet security suite, it’s also essential that the product also has excellent customer service to help solve any problems you may face while using the software. Heimdal Security knows that and acts accordingly.
Not only does Heimdal offer a vast array of channels for getting in touch, such as 24/7 live chat, email, ticket submission, and social media, but it even offers excellent written material organized in a very user-friendly way. You can always go to the FAQ and search for your queries, but you can also easily access other important information, such as announcements, known issues, and step-by-step guides for all Heimdal products. On top of that, you can always read Heimdal’s award-winning cybersecurity blog, which is packed with free educational courses.
Although Thor Home Premium may lack some features such as a VPN, data shredding, or a webcam shield, the truth is, if you want an impenetrable fortress against all types of malware, virus, ransomware, and others, this is the internet security suite for you. Not only is its antivirus always on the lookout for dangerous infections, but Thor Home Premium also protects you even before those infections cross your fortress gates.
On top of that, it also helps you by keeping the most commonly-used software up to date at all times, making sure hackers are not able to exploit it to find their way into your computer. All of this without you ever feeling the slightest slowdown and working in the shadows without you even realizing it, as a security suite should be. Who would have thought that a company with a Viking as its logo would work like a ninja?
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