Malwarebytes Premium 3.0 announced

Malwarebytes, maker of the popular Anti-Malware application for Windows,released a first beta version of Malwarebytes Premium 3.0 for the operating system.

Malwarebytes Premium is a new product that combines the company's Anti-Malware, Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware products in a single package.

The product comes at a cost of $39.99 per computer per year. As a comparison, both Anti-Malware and Anti-Exploit are available for $24.95 per year while Anti-Ransomware is offered as a beta currently only.

it is unclear right now if the new Malwarebytes Premium will replace existing company products, or if it will be offered as an additional option besides Anti-Malware, Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware.

Malwarbytes did announce that it plans to grandfather existing customers in at the current price. It seems that lifetime licenses will also be honored by the company.

As we did with our change from perpetual to subscription, we will grandfather in existing customers at their current price. We are still working out the details, but I assure you we will take care of all existing customers.

Note: The setup routine will update any existing copy of Anti-Malware, Anti-Exploit or Anti-Ransomware to Malwarebytes Premium during installation.

Malwarebytes Premium 3.0

MalwarebytesPremium ships with a re-designed interface that displays the main entry points of the application on the side instead of the header.

The dashboard reveals more information but that is to be expected considering that Malwarebytes Premium includes additional protection modules.

The right side of the interface highlights the real-time protection status -- web, exploit, malware and ransomware -- the scan status which highlights the last scan, the next scheduled scan, and the update statuts, and the protection history.

It takes one click to run a manual scan of the system just like before. Since this is a premium product, it features real-time protection, something that the free version of Anti-Malware does not support.

The settings are more complex now thanks to the added modules. One thing you may want to do is enable the scanning for rootkits under protection, as this is disabled by default.

You may also configure the anti-exploit behavior in detail, by enabling or disabling certain anti-exploit technologies for program types, e.g. browsers or media players.

You find options under protection to disable any of the available real-time protection modules. So, if you don't want the program to protect you against certain kinds of threats, this is the place to do so.

This can be useful if you run other programs that protect your system against these threats already, or if you run into issues when those security modules are enabled.

The preferences old more settings of interest. You may define the handling of potentially unwanted programs and potentially unwanted modifications there, change the update interval, set the update behavior (automatic or not), configure notifications, enable Windows context menu options and more.

There is also an option to schedule scans, and to add files, folders, websites, exploits or applications to the list of exclusions.

Closing Words

The new Malwarebytes Premium combines the company's major security products Anti-Malware Premium, Anti-Exploit and Anti-Ransomware in a single package. That's excellent for users who run them all or at least two of them, provided that they have a commercial license -- best lifetime -- already.

The product is available as a beta version currently which means that it is not suitable for production environments.

Things are a bit unclear right now in regards to licenses and the grandfathering, and whether all current products remain available as individual products.

Malwarebytes Premium runs alongside other security solutions. Malwarebytes notes that the scanning performance has improved by three to four times.

On a personal note, I'm looking forward to the new Malwarebytes Premium as I run two of the company's products already on my Windows machines. Combining those into one should make things a little simpler.

You can download Malwarebytes Premium from the official forum currently. The product will be available on the official site once it is released as a stable version.