Avast Business CloudCare Security

Managed Next-Gen Antivirus Security

avast cloudcare logo

What is Avast CloudCare?

Avast provides virus and security protection for your computers, and CloudCare offers everything the stand alone security product offers with the added benefit of being managed and monitored by your IT provider 24/7.  In this case, TwinBytes monitors and manages it for you being an authorized CloudCare reseller.

How long has Avast been around?

In existence since 1988, older than Norton, and only 1 year younger than McAfee.  It basically was founded just before Microsoft Windows graphical user interface 3.1 was released.
View their profile here: https://www.avast.com/history

What kind of services can Avast CloudCare offer?

  • Managed Anti-Virus / Firewall security
  • Managed Content Filtering (control employees and children’s website access)
  • Anti-spam
  •  Email Encryption
  • Managed Online Backup
  • Remote IT Support

Aside from virus and firewall security, each component listed above is sold separately and can be packaged any way you like, so you get only what you need, nothing more, nothing less.  We have many customers on this product for personal use because, believe it or not, it’s the same price and sometimes cheaper that stand alone products that are not managed or monitored.  They also love the idea we have unattended remote support abilities to help them easily.

Avast CloudCare protection versus the stand alone version anyone can buy direct?

  • Without Avast CloudCare managed virus protection, you are relying 100% on faith that Avast will continue to run as expected.  15 years in this business I’ve seen many different anti-virus programs stop working unexpected and the user was completely unaware.  Upto and including all below items in this list.
  • Avast CloudCare virus protection allows us to monitor the following and make corrections as needed behind the scenes:
    • Make sure real time protection hasn’t stopped
    • Make sure scheduled scans haven’t been missed, and if so, we can initiate a scan remotely
    • Make sure updates have not failed, and if so, we can fix remotely
    • Make sure any viruses that have been found are removed.  If not removed we can do it remotely.
    • As a bonus we can tell if hard drive space gets dangerously low affecting performance, etc.
    • As a bonus we can also tell if memory usage too high and needs to be addressed.
    • Remote IT support tool included for free, so if you need help, all you have to do is call or email us.  No need to download any other software or walk through clicking anything.

Have a look at the Avast stand alone products for comparison here.  You can see even with their “5 pack” deal, we can offer more for less money.

CloudCare provides a portal (as below) so we can see all our clients at a glance if anyone has a virus, or updates and scans stopped working,hard drive space is full or memory usage high, or the entire device stopped communicating.

CloudCare Portal 2019

Please contact Twinbytes via phone or email and ask how we can help you.  We can send you a brochure on any of the above listed services and have a conversation with you about how this can help your business.

Manual upgrade to the latest version

If you are currently using CloudCare with Twinbytes and want to manually force an upgrade to the latest version at any time, you can do so via the following link.  It’s totally safe and a good idea to be up to date at all times.  With that said, updates are rolled out ASAP as they become available but only so many can be done at once to avoid bogging down traffic.

This is the same link to update on your own or if you were prompted by Twinbytes to upgrade because of a problem with the automatic remote upgrading.  It upgrades automatically on it’s own after you click the link below.  It may look like nothing happens, but trust that it is, and after a few minutes you can check via the instructions below.
CloudCare Upgrade tool

How to check your current version of CloudCare

Right click on the Avast icon down by your time.  Click on “About” as per image below.  Avast changed the look of their logo sometime in September 2021.  Below images show the new look.  It’s still orange and white.

 

A Window will pop up showing you your current version as per image below.

Check on the status of our servers?

If there are problems installing, upgrading or anything else and you want to quickly check for yourself on the status of the service, please use the link below and feel free to bookmark or add to your favorites.
http://status.cloudcare.avg.com/

How to refresh your connection to our monitored services

If you’re having problems with scheduled scans not happening at the time you thought it was scheduled for, or you just feel there is some reason you might not be getting the correct policy information from our managed service, you can force a reauthentication by right clicking on the Avast CloudCare icon in your system tray while at the same time, first, holding down your Ctrl key on the keyboard.

You will see two additional options as in the screen shot below including “Reauthenticate” and “Clear Cache”.  Basically you want to try “Clear Cache” first.  It looks like nothing happened but just trust that it did.  Next right click the Avast icon again while holding down Ctrl and this time choose “Reauthenticate”.  Again it looks like nothing happened, but just trust that it did.  If you look at your settings you may noticed they changed.

If it’s not showing what you expect, give us a call or email your requested changes.  We will update your policy and then you can go through this reauthentication process again to force the changes right away.

How to change your firewall settings

We have detailed instructions on our blog with pictures and everything if you want to edit or set your firewall settings yourself.  It’s changed since Avast bought out AVG.

How to disable remote access

Remote support is built into Avast CloudCare for your convenience if you need us to connect into your computer remotely to help you.  This would have been explained to you when you first signed up and that we suggest leaving it enabled for your convenience if you get locked out of your computer and can’t enable remote support, we can still get in to help you quickly and easily, saving you time and money.  If you want to ensure we (As your Avast CloudCare provider) can not remote into your computer without your knowledge but still have the remote tool installed, follow this simple steps.

  1. Right click on the Avast icon down by your time like on the picture below (left); then click on “Open Premium Remote Control…”.
  2. Remove the checkmark on “Allow remote connections to this device”
  3. Click Close.  That’s it!
  4. You will have to turn it back on for us to help you and we can not help you if you get locked out of your computer and it is already disabled.

If you want to allow us in, do the same steps putting the checkmark back on.  Note, if you have it off and get locked out of your computer, we might have been able to help you if remote was turned on, but since you can’t log in to turn it on, we can’t connect remote and an onsite visit will be necessary and more costly.

open remote control 


Call us today to learn more about Avast Business CloudCare Security and managed antivirus security.