360 Total Security Essential

360 Total Security Essential is the free edition of 360 Total Security, an antivirus suite that combines malware protection with cleanup and speed-up tools. It shares the interface and core protection of the paid Premium edition, while extras such as the driver updater, privacy protection and ad-free mode are reserved for Premium. The main feature of this solution is that it uses several antivirus engines: Bitdefender, 360 Cloud, QVMII and Avira. The Bitdefender and Avira engines work locally, so they can scan files without a connection to the 360 cloud.

Another useful feature of 360 Total Security Essential is that this antivirus can run potentially dangerous programs in a closed environment - "Sandbox", thus preventing such applications from damaging your system. Other protection features include safe online shopping and detection of fraudulent websites, scanning of files downloaded from the Internet, automatic scanning of plug-in USB drives, protection from keyloggers and blocking of unauthorized webcam access.

The program also offers Full Check, Speedup and Cleanup modules that disable unneeded startup items and remove junk files and browser plug-ins, and it updates its virus definitions automatically in the background. Besides the small online installer, the official site offers an offline installer for computers with a slow connection. 360 Total Security Essential runs on Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 and 11.

360 Total Security Essential provides comprehensive antivirus protection using multiple engines and a secure sandbox environment for running potentially risky programs.