Software of the Week: DriveSentry

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As computer usage becomes a necessity worldwide, more and more users recognize the needs for better PC security. Antivirus software with decent detection, virus database updates and stability are instantly lifted to the top of the demand list, while weaker antivirus will disappear into oblivion if they do not improve. To stay ahead of the antivirus field, security software vendors are all competing to provide features that can facilitate in a better detection of malwares. Signature-based detection are still the prevalent method out there, followed by heuristics detection and behavioral analysis.

Blacklisting is one of the prevalent methods of malware detection...it works for sure, but does it works efficiently or does it just works sufficiently effective?

Even with all these detection method, the future of existing malwares are still supposedly brighter than those of current PC protection method. Some security vendors suggests a new protection method called 'whitelisting' to be proactively added to the range of PC protection. In whitelisting, security software basically allows only the good stuff, while denying the unknown or bad stuffs. It is a hot issue, with some security companies now attempting to adopt the practice. One company which successfully adapted 'whitelisting' as a major line of protection is DriveSentry.


DriveSentry is a security company founded in 2005 and based in both the UK and the US. The company believes that whitelisting is the true future of antivirus technology and strives to provide users a solution which can protect them against zero-day attacks and undiscovered exploits. It is interesting to note that the company does NOT rely on heuristic based detection, but purely on whitelisting based detection combined with signature based protection. The company creates database of threats added with another list of known good programs in their antivirus to ensure that users are protected against the unknown and be informed over the known.



DriveSentry is known for two of its currently existing software products, DriveSentry Antivirus and Drive Sentry GoAnywhere. DriveSentry Antivirus is a free, non-commercial antivirus equipped with a virus scanning engine and whitelisting technology for protection against virus, spyware and rootkits. DriveSentry GoAnywhere is a portable antivirus specially designed for USB disk protection against virus, spywares and rootkits and it operates completely on a USB drive. Recent updates to these two software includes a new cloud version of DriveSentry Antivirus and a new AES encryption function for DriveSentry GoAnywhere.


DriveSentry Antivirus v3.1 currently supports Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. GoAnywhere v1.02 support similar operating system with Antivirus while its supported devices includes external hard drive (portable disk), USB drive (pendrive), flash memory and even MP3 players.


To download DriveSentry Antivirus v3.1, click on the download link.

To download DriveSentry GoAnywhere v1.02 for a 30-day trial, click on the download link.

To visit the DriveSentry official website, click here.

To learn more about whitelisting technology, you can read this article.