Sorry to be late to the party ... the avast managing of secure connections so that the email streams can be scanned has nothing, on the face of it it, to do with the problem discussed here which is the need to be able to tell the avast alert mechanism to send an alert email using a secure email connection. Presently you use an unsecured email server to send the alert or it just does not work.
Maybe the avast folks will have this long standing problem fixed in avast 5 (let's hope so) as well as the totally separate issue of supporting the management of secured email connections and allowing the resulting mail streams to be scanned by avast.
I know I am being too precise for some but please we need to avoid some of the legal morass in saying that avast will scan secure connections. Let's be clear avast does not and avast 5 will not scan secure email connections (because, as a reputable player, it cannot ever claim to do so). It will manage the secure email connections end points in a way that allows avast to scan the resulting unsecured mail streams safely and securely inside the user's system.