This is a collection of antivirus evaluations collected from magazines that support my findings over the past year. Keep in mind that these are mostly last years versions and is probably what you are currently using. The new versions have just recently come out and we will collect some new reviews soon.
ESET Smart Security
Independent test labs consistently rank ESET’s Nod32 antivirus program as one of the top performers, so how has company gone about improving its product? For starters, the Smart Security suite builds on Nod32’s core by stuffing a personal firewall, antispyware module, web access protection, and spam controls into a tidy 22MB package. But that’s just the beginning.
From first click to finish, you’ll be up and running in less than a minute with no reboot required. The default settings will have you ready to romp around the web, but should you decide to dive into the interface’s advanced section, you’ll find a truckload of options at your disposal in plain English.
In addition to scouring your local drives, the real-time file protection homes in on removable media and network drives too. And when it comes to safeguarding your email, if you’re not using Outlook, simply expand the POP3 tree and put a checkmark next to your email client of choice, or click the Add button if you don’t see it listed. It doesn’t get any easier than this.
Parental units and IT admins alike will appreciate the ability to block specific web addresses, and support for wildcard entries save you the time of inputting every subdomain. Once you have everything configured, export your settings to an XML file for effortless configuration of your entire home or work network.
Given the bevy of options and stellar track record, we were determined to uncover an Achilles’ heel, but we just couldn’t find one. ESET’s Smart Security thwarted our attempts to download infected files, making the scant 7 minutes and 54 seconds it took to scan our system feel as though we were just going through the motions.
Only the lack of identity protection and the inability to create a rescue disk prevent this from being the perfect package. As it stands, it will have to settle for near-perfect.
Verdict: 9
www.eset.com
$59 1 yr ($89 2 yrs)
Norton Internet Security 2009
Could this be the luxury sedan of antivirus suites?
For the latest version of its AV suite, Symantec went back to the drawing board and completely rewritten the program from the ground up with a focus on speed. Even the installer has been revamped; in an attempt to reduce setup time to less than a minute (we clocked it at 55 seconds), Symantec coded its own proprietary installer instead of using Microsoft’s, as it has
in the past.
This year’s release adds a smart scheduler that monitors task utilization in real time and queues up its task if the system is busy. This means if you’re lining up a headshot in your favorite shooter, NIS will take a backseat until system resources are freed. But if a task qualifies as critical, it will run regardless of what you’re doing, so you can continue to crunch
Folding@Home without being a sitting target. And to keep itself honest, Symantec integrates a system monitor showing what percentage of CPU cycles NIS is consuming—nifty!
Live Update has been rewritten too, and in addition to regular updates, Symantec sends out micro updates. These pulse updates ensure that when a new threat is discovered in the wild, you’ll have the necessary signature definition within minutes instead of waiting up to 24 hours for the next refresh.
The program swept through our test system in less than 10 minutes, and subsequent scans completed in less than two minutes! NIS accomplishes this by discerning between trusted and untrusted files and by default won’t rescan files that haven’t changed.
NIS 2009 leaves virtually no security stone unturned. Our biggest knock is that not all features work under Vista x64, such as right-click scanning. Still, if security suites were cars, consider NIS 2009 a decked-out Lexus.
Verdict: 9
www.symantec.com
$70 (3 PCs)
AVG Internet Security 8.0
An old favorite gets a new look
Now in version 8.0, AVG’s latest release appears to have taken a page or three from Vista. A redesigned interface sports high-resolution icons and a more colorful palette, and even the system tray icon feels borrowed from Microsoft’s newest OS; turn off one of the security modules and the icon turns red, alerting you of impending doom, even if you’ve only disabled the spam filter. That’s just wacky. Thankfully, you can turn off the ominous notification.
No other AV application we tested consumed more RAM, and our performance benchmarks took the biggest hit with AVG installed. During a system scan (which, while not the slowest, dragged along at the tail end of all the suites), CPU utilization averaged 25 percent with sporadic spikes reaching as high as 84 percent. We didn’t know if AVG was scanning or having a seizure.
AVG provides one of the more feature-rich packages of the bunch. In addition to the new scanning engine, you’ll find spam and spyware protection, a firewall, safeguards against drive-by downloads, immunity against IM-bound attacks (IQC and MSN only), a customizable scheduler, and a rootkit scanner. Tying it all together is a back end brimming with options to satiate even the most demanding security connoisseur.
We especially like the concept behind AVG’s web protection; we just wish it worked better. The Active Surf-Shield component scans visited web pages for malicious code and the Search Shield checks Google, MSN, and Yahoo search results for active threats, but enabling them slows down web surfing. And at the time of this writing, Search Shield was not working with Firefox 3.0.
AVG’s detection rate dips below that of the best-performing AV apps during Virus Bulletin’s extensive testing but still earned a VB100 award, meaning it caught all of VB’s in-the-wild viruses with no false positives. ANG also excelled in our own tests. Just make sure you have a modern system to run it on.
Verdict: 7
www.grisoft.com
$55 (2 yrs)
Kaspersky Internet Security 2009
Why pay more when you can get the same or better for less?
At $80 for a one-year subscription, Kaspersky charges more than any other suite we tested. If you buy the downloadable version instead of a retail boxed copy, the license is good for up to three users—that’s little consolation to single-PC
households.
Kaspersky also holds the undesirable record for longest install time. What started off as a pokey two-minute install ballooned into an agonizing eight minutes composed of a tediously long update and no less than two reboots.
Once we were finally up and running, Kaspersky began to atone for its pricing and installation sins. Like Norton’s package, Kaspersky significantly shortens subsequent system scans by skipping files already determined to be clean. During an initial run-through, Kaspersky’s iChecker algorithm makes note of certain files’ digital signatures and saves them in a special table. If the signature matches the next time a scan takes place, the file will be skipped over. The result is that a 12-minute system scan was reduced to a blazing one minute and 14 seconds, finally setting a record Kaspersky could be proud of.
Like the other full-featured suites, Kaspersky crams a multitude of tools into a neatly organized package and manages to set itself apart in some areas. Rather than limit email scanning to Outlook and POP3, Kaspersky also analyzes IMAP traffic. It boasts a banner-ad blocker and, through parental controls, the ability to limit how much time children can roam the web. Finally, road warriors will appreciate the option to automatically disable scheduled scans when running on battery power.
Kaspersky provided a formidable wall of defense against both viruses and spyware, keeping our test bed protected against Trojans, dialers, and other Internet-bound ills. But so did some of the less-expensive suites.
Verdict: 6
http://usa.kaspersky.com
$80 (3 PCs)
McAfee Total Protection 2009
A mishmash of features leaves us with mixed feelings
Most enthusiasts view McAfee as just another resource hog often found in OEM systems alongside performance-pillaging bloatware. Fair assessment or not, this is the perception McAfee’s up against in trying to win over the PC elite. It helps that the company isn’t blissfully unaware of the importance placed on performance; its latest edition promises to raise the bar with a more efficient engine that won’t drag your system down.
In our testing, McAfee fell in the middle of the pack instead of leading the charge. RAM consumption crept above what we’d consider lean, and while scanning for malware, CPU utilization often hovered around 40 percent. That in itself isn’t criminal, but we felt swindled when all it bought us was the second-slowest scan time of the bunch—although, remarkably, we didn’t see much of a drop in gaming or day-to-day computing performance.
McAfee’s list of features ranges in practicality from the beneficial to the unlikely to ever be used. Occupying the former camp are spyware protection, a highly configurable firewall, email and IM guards, basic parental controls, and a file shredder. But we just can’t get stoked about the virus map, which displays global viral hot spots, or the HackerWatch module, which looks for patterns of attack around the world to report to ISPs. And still other features, like Active Protection for real-time safeguards, will be made available only through future updates—boo!
Living up to its name, McAfee Total Protection 2009 proved a formidable adversary against all types of malware and stopped malicious websites from loading. We also dig McAfee’s SiteAdvisor tool, which not only identifies questionable search results but also gives a detailed report on why the URL is suspect. But no matter how good it protects, we’re not willing to endure slow scanning performance or wait for features that should have been available at release.
Verdict: 6
www.mcafee.com
$70 (3 PCs)