Gothenburg, Sweden (December 15, 2008) Well-known anti-spyware pioneer Lavasoft today announced the global release of Anti-Virus Helix, a stand-alone security tool designed to address the rapidly changing malware landscape. This new product delivers comprehensive protection and high performance with low impact on system resources. Using advanced heuristic technology, it offers superior detection rates, guarding against over 1.5 million known threats, along with unknown, emerging, and rapidly changing threats, including viruses, worms, rootkits, bots, blended threats and drive-by downloads.

"Lavasoft's primary focus and commitment is, and will continue to be, to protect the privacy of computer users with high-quality security solutions," says Lavasoft CEO Jason King. "Our customers have been asking for anti-virus protection from our company for years. We recently answered that call by integrating anti-virus into our flagship anti-spyware program, Ad-Aware. We now also offer an individual anti-virus tool for the niche market of savvy customers who insist on having stand-alone security tools versus security suites," says King.

Award-Winning Anti-Virus Technology

Developed in collaboration with a leading anti-virus technology partner, and 20 years of virus research, Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix is designed to address the explosive growth of today's cyber threats by offering superior detection rates and real-time protection.

Advanced Heuristic Analysis and Detection

Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix features advanced heuristics technology to detect and guard against unknown or rapidly changing attackers. The heuristics looks at the characteristics and the code sequences of the file to determine whether or not the file is malicious, giving computer users protection against both known threats, as well as against emerging and unknown threats.

High Performance and Low System Resource Usage

Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix provides extensive threat detection and runs seamlessly with low impact on system resources, with an efficient and easy to use interface.

Integrated E-mail Scanner

Lavasoft Anti-Virus Helix also includes comprehensive protection against e-mail borne threats, one of the most common methods of infection, with an integrated e-mail scanner supporting both POP3 and SMTP.