Security software vendor Bitdefender is currently beta-testing a new product called Safepay. Bitdefender Safepay is a protected web browser running in a secured environment designed to protect your credit card information, account number or any other sensitive data when you enter them while accessing different online locations such as shopping sites and web portals of banks. Safepay blocks keyloggers that may steal your credentials for fraudulent purposes, prevents tempering attempts that other browsers are exposed to, provides protection against unshielded Wi-Fi hotspots, blocks phishing websites and much more.
Right after installing Bitdefender Safepay, you will be prompted to login with a MyBitdefender account. If you don’t already have a MyBitdefender account, you can create a new one in just under a minute. Alternatively, you can sign in with your Facebook, Google or Microsoft account.
On launch, SafePay scans your computer for existing malware to make sure your session doesn’t run the risk of getting compromised. If necessary, SafePay will upload suspicious files to the cloud for identification. Bitdefender says the scan uses in-the-cloud scanning to detect malware running in your system, but judging by size of the download (85 MB), I suspect there is a fair deal of malware scanning code in-built into the browser itself.
The browser is configured to run the quick scan each time it is launched, but subsequent scans are faster than the first scan and shouldn’t take longer than a minute or two. The startup scan can also be disabled from the browser settings.
Bitdefender Safepay runs in full-screen mode during which interaction with other running programs and the operating system itself is restricted. For instance, Alt+Tab switching is disabled and so is the PrintScreen function (which is why I had to take a picture of the monitor screen instead of a normal screenshot). You can’t minimize the program, but you can switch to the desktop to come out of the secure mode. Bitdefender Safepay runs as a background service and it is not possible to completely exit the program. Terminating the program by killing the process from the Task Manager is met with an “Access Denied” alert message.
The program comes with its own virtual keyboard that appears when you click inside any input field on a webpage. This is designed to bypass any keyloggers which might have infected your system.
Hotspot protection feature provides an extra layer of security. When you connect to an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot, SafePay encrypts Internet helping you maintain your privacy no matter.
Safepay is not designed for normal browsing of websites. It is practically uncustomizable, and you may encounter various problems on websites because some actions are automatically blocked
to prevent malware injection and other vulnerabilities.
Remember, Bitdefender Safepay is a beta software and unstable and can lead to data loss. It did crash on my machine once. Make sure you don’t have any unsaved work in any running program before you launch Safepay.
Well, you do not have to terminate it from Task Manager. You can simply go in the secure desktop and close Safepay - this will automatically close the secure desktop and return to the default desktop.
ReplyDeleteI know. I was talking about the background processes, those keep running even if the browser is not open and these processes cannot be terminated.
ReplyDeleteI should be more articulate in future.
I am quite interested on this browser, seems interesting as it says it would be more secured. Start up scan seems new to me, I hope it will not take that too much time to scan.
ReplyDelete