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What’s it called? AVG Anti-Virus Free 8.5
Who makes it? AVG Technologies
How much is it? FREE!!
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We liked the earlier version but this one has taken it on and simply improved it. Yes, yes we know the old adage ‘You get want you pay for’ but here AVG delivers first class anti-virus just like before but also includes:
Protects in real time against poisoned web pages while you're surfing Real-time safety ratings for all search results in Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live searc Easy access to LinkScanner tools, built-in search capability There is, as expected the option to upgrade to the paid versions that offer more protection against spam, rootkits and so on, but if it’s a first class anti-virus product you need then you do not need to go anywhere else. Personally, the upgrade went seamlessly but there have been reports in forums of users being unable to install the latest version. However, the one thing that really is remarkable is that the vendor have provided free support for private users, and their forum actually provides practical answers in a timely fashion. If you need Anti-Virus and don’t want to pay, then you will struggle to find a better product. Quote:
Overall – A great piece of software before, now even better
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What’s it called?VirusBarrier X5
Who makes it? Intego
How much is it? £49.95 for single seat license.
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Where can I get it? http://www.intego.com/virusbarrier/
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As mentioned in our review of MacScan last month, a growing number of malware and viruses are targeting mac users. We have therefore expanded the numbers of reviews of security products for Mac. VirusBarrier X5 is an anti-virus product to protect not only your Mac computer but also your iphone and itouch from malware. Installation was straight forward, and the first thing we noticed is the interface is made up of a bright green dashboard. Although different from standard Mac applications, it is straightforward to use. VirusBarrier X5 scans can be scheduled either daily,monthly,,at a time of your choosing, or manually. VirusBarrier X5 manual and automated scans can be configured by drive, type of documents, applications, emails and folder selection. The first time scan will take longer then subsequent scans as a turbo mode is used to record information from previous scans. If a virus is found, VirusBarrier X5 can either move the infected file to a quarantine zone, repair automatically or alert the user, in addition results can be stored to a folder or emailed to an external account. All activities, either virus scans performed or viruses found are logged, which can be exported to a folder as either text, xml or html formats on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. We found that the first full scan of a hard drive to a while (about 2 hours) but the later scans (test drive was conducted on a full 120GB hard drive) took about an hour due to the turbo mode. (results may vary dependant on your computer configuration) Virusbarrier X5 provides a real time scanner, to protect your computer from virus as applications are started or new files are downloaded, opened and/or installed. The Real-time scanner can be disabled manually until reboot or manual restart (which requires password authentication). The real-time scanner can be configured to exclude certain folders, file types or emails to minimise the impact of performance, which we did find can slow down by a couple of seconds the initialisation of applications. Updating of the Virusbarrier X5 software is set up during installation through its NetUpdate feature, this can be scheduled either daily, weekly or monthly and configured to be updated as a background process. Quote:
Overall: While the real-time scanner may have a slight impact on the performance of your Mac, it a feature rich, easy to use virus scanner.
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What’s it called? Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 Who makes it? Kaspersky What does it run on? Where can I get it? http://www.kaspersky.co.uk Ease of installation:
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Whilst antivirus solutions may no longer be considered a silver bullet, in the current and increasing wave of on-line eCrime and Fraud, malicious code, including Trojans, viruses, worms, not to mention those malicious sites posing an ever present danger to on-line security. A well maintained, up-to-date antivirus application MUST be considered essential armour for the Laptop, or PC. Here one very well respected solution to defend our Home and Office systems arrives out of the cold depths of Russia from the Kaspersky Labs Kaspersky do not want to complicate things with several products. They have only two offers aimed at home users, Anti-virus and Internet Security, now in version 2009. Anti-virus protects against most of today's threats that can attack your computer. When you want to be safe against traditional file based viruses, spyware, email viruses or web ones, Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 can handle it with ease. If you need complete protection you may want to look at their Internet Security product. To evaluate its effectiveness, options and capabilities we ran three evaluations, on three different platforms. 1) A Mobile Dell XPS Laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate, using WiFi, Bluetooth, and Public Hot Spots, 2) A Dell Workstation running Vista Business connected to a LAN, and last but to least, for the home user, 3) A Dell PC running Vista Standard connected to an 802.11g Hub, and onward to the potentially hostile space of the Internet. Installation of the Kaspersky application itself was reasonably easy, albeit, an annoyance was encountered on the Home System, generated by the former AVG antivirus product, which presented somewhat of a challenge to uninstall (see Note below). That said the remainder where running MacAfee antivirus, and uninstall and update to Kaspersky went without a hitch. All default options used provide good security and wont affect your computer's performance. We liked simple view of main options with easy switch to more advanced options. Unlike with some other products there are not scheduled scans installed by default but you have the option to change this to run daily. We also upgraded from a previous version, this worked like a charm and as long as you still have valid license, you do not need spend a penny. Kaspersky updated itself to version 2009 with almost no interaction from us. We liked website content scanning that can recognise malicious content even within well known sites. The product of course protects against known malicious sites, though we would like to see something similar to McAfee's SiteAdvisor. We also liked unique feature that scans your computer for out-dated software and highlights all applications that need updating. You might be surprised what relics are stored on your harddisk. Let's make some cleaning. Having now run with the product for three weeks, it was found it to be very stable, effective at stopping malicious content, and in fact upon the complete scan of the Dell Mobile system, it actually located some malicious content which had been missed by the previous product. Another impressive aspect of the Kaspersky solution was the flexibility and wide range of configuration options which may be applied - all easy to understand, allowing the security-bar to be shifted both up and down to meet the user expectations. As you would expect from a top shelf product, Kaspersky comes along with On-Line Anti Phishing, Anti Malware protection, as well as what they refer to as Proactive Defence, providing protection from Key Loggers, Hidden Driver Installs, O/S Kernel Modifications, Hidden Objects (Malicious), as well as protection against Hidden Processes. The Kaspersky solution in its 2009 guise also comes with an Application Filtering Firewall component, which when run with the other proactive defences provides a high degree of in-depth control aligned enabled monitoring of events. For the those parents who wish to protect their young from the dangers of unfettered access to the Internet, Kaspersky also provision the capability of Parental Control, which may be locked down with a system password. The Kaspersky antivirus solution enjoys extremely frequent updates, which the box informs, if available, are pulled down every hour, a feature we liked, as this we see as a better practice for minimising the risk posed from by Zero Day Threats (as 1 hour is much more solid than 1 day (or more)). Overall, we found that the Kasperskey AV solution did exactly what it said on the tin (or in this case box), and provided a level of protection commensurate with all expectations, on all evaluated platforms. In fact, so impressed was the reviewer (me) with the Kaspersky solution it will be remaining installed on my systems to afford them protection – furthermore I have since been back to my supplier, and now all of my systems, servers, and assets are protected by Kaspersky! The most impressive thing of all, we the price – in this case the original three user licence which were purchased from PC World, along with annual support and updates the cost was less than £20 (that represent 0.018 pence per day for each machine). However we think Kaspersky Internet security 2009, only £10 more, offers better value. Note: A number of antivirus solutions have been noted not to do a complete a clean uninstall, leaving the system populated with remnants of the old application resulting in the new antivirus product objecting to the presence of another AV solution on the same host (as was the case here). We at SS are certain that this is just bad clean up practice of the vendor uninstall. However, in order to allow free competition, and ease of operation, along with satisfactory product removal, we would urge the guilty culprits of such AV solutions to clean up their uninstall process for the sake of their public. Quote:
Overall Conclusion: Excellent and effective delivery of end point protection, easy to install, and represents an excellent ROI for Home, SME, as well as any Corporation who would be considering an Enterprise solution. In the opinion of the evaluator, this product is second to none. So if you favour a commercial grade antivirus product, but feel they are too expensive, and you don’t have current protection, quite simply, now there is no excuse. However we would recommend going for Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 for better value for money (and even better protection).
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SurfingSafer have published a new review of Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2009 in the Anti-Virus Products category. You can read the review here. |
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What’s it called?Panda Antivirus Pro 2009
Who makes it? Panda
How much is it? £30.99 for 12 months and 3 PC in one home
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Where can I get it? www.pandasecuri
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Panda software is a less known vendor of security software. For home users, there are four versions of its software and the basic one is reviewed here. Well, is 'basic' really a fair statement? We think not. Panda Antivirus Pro 2009 is a truly capable product that integrates features found in other all-in-one products. Hence we have assigned it to the all-in-one category rather than the normal antivirus. Why? It contains:
The installation of the product was really seamless. You can download a trial version and register later. However, you will have to wait for the download to finish, the installation file is chunky at 77 MB. The default configuration is one of the reasons the product did not get full 5 star rating. Some of the features highlighted by Panda on their website were not enabled by default, such as TruePrevent which protects against unknown threats. The option to look for unauthorised computers on your network is useful but requires some knowledge and configuration. With the cost of £30 for one year, for up to 3 computers in your home, this is very good choice if you have more than PC. Quote:
Overall this is very good product with solid features. It clearly shows how boundaries between types of security products for the home are diminishing. For more advanced features, users should look to upgrade to more advanced products from Panda.
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What’s it called? Message Google Discovery Who makes it? Google How much is it? $12 per user per year What does it run on? N/A Where can I get it? www.google.com/a/security Ease of installation:
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If you want someone else to worry about email borne viruses and spam then this service from Google, one of the fruits of its purchase of Postini, is a reasonable option. The setup does not require a modicum of IT knowledge; it consists of uploading a list of users and changing you MX records (mail exchanger records). Once configured the service scans all email for viruses and spam before forwarding your mail to your servers. We like the user account synchronisation and single sign on features. The service also provides a good plug-in to MS Outlook that allows users to search their message archive. On the security side, Google supports TLS (Transport Layer Security) which should improve the security of emails that you exchange with your business partners. You can even set the service to require TLS for specific email domains, so you know that emails to and from these domains cannot be read on the Internet. The service does not offer filtering for obscene images; Google claims that such protection does not work anyway. We have to agree; simply analysing a percentage of skin tones in a picture is not going to differentiate between obscene content and legitimate family pictures. Quote:
Overall we find the service better than the MessageLabs offering and we are happy to recommend it to any organisation, small to enterprise, as a useful back-up solution.
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What’s it called? Message Google Discovery Who makes it? Google How much is it? $25 per user per year What does it run on? N/A Where can I get it? www.google.com/a/security Ease of installation:
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If you want someone else to worry about email borne viruses and spam then this service from Google, one of the fruits of its purchase of Postini, is a reasonable option. The setup does not require a modicum of IT knowledge; it consists of uploading a list of users and changing you MX records (mail exchanger records). Once configured the service scans all email for viruses and spam before forwarding your mail to your servers. In addition the service will archive emails for as long as you need. You do need to specify the number of years you wish to retain those email for when you order the service. This archiving feature is useful as it provides a handy backup of fall-back mechanism. There is no volume limit and you only pay for number of years that you specify. Additional years are charged for at a discounted rate. However, you should bear in mind that, despite the name of the service, this is not a legal archive and is no substitute for proper email management solutions. We like the user account synchronisation and single sign on features. The service also provides a good plug-in to MS Outlook that allows users to search their message archive. On the security side, Google supports TLS (Transport Layer Security) which should improve the security of emails that you exchange with your business partners. You can even set the service to require TLS for specific email domains, so you know that emails to and from these domains cannot be read on the Internet. The service does not offer filtering for obscene images; Google claims that such protection does not work anyway. We have to agree; simply analysing a percentage of skin tones in a picture is not going to differentiate between obscene content and legitimate family pictures. Quote:
Overall we find the service better than the MessageLabs offering and we are happy to recommend it to any organisation, small to enterprise, as a useful back-up solution. You should bear in mind, however, that this is no substitute for proper email retention solutions and should not be relied upon as such. For this reason we can only grant it 4 stars overall.
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We have published new review of TrendMicro AntiVirus plus AntiSpyware 2008. You can read the review here. |
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