Print
In some ways, visiting cyberspace is kind of like entering a crowded subway car during the peak of flu season. You’re surrounded by all sorts of germs—in the form of trojans, spyware, viruses, rootkits, etc.—just looking for a vulnerable host to invade and feed on. Once you’re infected, these pests can wreak havoc on your system, swiping your personal information and passwords, annihilating your credit rating, and stealing your identity. To avoid a potentially virulent attack, you need to take precautions.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could ward off both human and computer viruses in one (gooey) swoop?
Smart computing habits—like never downloading unexpected email attachments—are your first line of defense, but that’s not always enough. The best way to protect yourself is with a serious immunity booster, which is exactly what all-in-one security suites provide. Based on our prior antivirus roundups, it’s no longer a question of whether an all-encompassing antivirus package can provide adequate protection on all fronts, but which one does it best?
To find out, we’re pitting the 2011 versions of last year’s top five performing AV applications against five security suites we’ve never before reviewed. The two exceptions are ESET Smart Security, which hasn’t been overhauled since our last roundup, and Kaspersky Internet Security 2011, which we already evaluated and gave a 9 verdict / Kick Ass award to for its rich (and useful) feature-set and insane level of protection. If the product you’re interested in didn’t make the cut, don’t fret; we’ll continue to run stand-alone AV reviews in future issues. In the meantime, we’re anxious to see if any of these suites are as capable as Kaspersky at protecting your PC’s health.
To earn a passing score, security suites have to excel in each of these five subjects.
We don’t spend hours tweaking our rigs to have sloppily coded software muck with system performance. That’s why we’re holding these suites accountable by looking at the overall performance picture. Compared to a clean install, we’re looking at things like boot times, PCMark Vantage benchmarks, file-transfer performance, and system resources. And, of course, we’re also interested in how long it takes to complete a system scan.
A security suite that’s constantly bombarding us with pop-ups and benign alerts can be just as bothersome as the malware it’s protecting us from. Your home security system doesn’t tell you every time a car or person walks by your home, and likewise, AV software should only interrupt you if there’s real trouble. We also take into account how easy (or hard) it is to navigate the UI.
Most power users will bleed their PayPal accounts dry funding a hardware upgrade, like a dual-GPU videocard or smoking-fast solid-state drive. But why shell out any money on security software when there are so many free options available? That’s up to this year’s contenders to answer, and to keep them honest, we’re also including two completely free AV scanners.
Eight of the 10 AV apps in this year’s roundup are full-fledged security suites. What separates these packages from regular antivirus software are the extra components, from enhanced spyware protection to spam controls, and whatever else each vendor decides to stuff in the box. But equally important is how meaningful these features are and how well they’re integrated. Think of it as the difference between ABS brakes, which we’ll take when shopping for a car, versus an air freshener, which doesn’t add any value. The same concept applies.
We’ve had success separating the wheat from the chaff in the past, so we’re not changing things up drastically here. We start by subjecting each AV app to synthetic spyware and virus tests provided by www.spycar.org and www.eicar.org. Next we romp around the web’s more treacherous destinations looking for trouble. We cap off our in-house testing by lobbing our own collection of malware grenades, which we’ve added to this year. Finally, we evaluate the results of independent testing labs, like Virus Bulletin (www.virusbtn.com), AV-Comparatives (www.av-comparatives.org), and AV-Test (www.av-test.org).
Microsoft didn’t even bother to announce a version upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0, and at a glance, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. But make no mistake, Microsoft’s team of mechanics tweaked the scan engine and made some other changes underneath the hood.
MSE provides a handful of options for scheduled scans, but doesn’t include the ability to set up two different types (Full and Quick) on different days.
Let’s talk performance. Last year’s version plodded through our files without any sense of urgency, and the speed didn’t pick up during subsequent scans. This time around, the scan engine didn’t waste time investigating clean files that hadn’t been altered. The result is that a laborious 27-minute scan was reduced to less than eight and a half minutes the second time around. Still not great, but MSE’s at least headed in the right direction.
MSE leaves a smaller footprint than an Oompa-Loompa. We recorded a boot penalty of just 10 seconds, and things only improved from there. Copying a 3GB collection of files to our local drive took the same amount of time with or without MSE installed, and memory usage increased only a few percentage points.
Version 2.0 manhandled our updated collection of malware and sailed through another round of testing from Virus Bulletin, earning its second consecutive VB100 award on the Windows 7 platform. And unlike before, version 2.0 keeps the Windows Firewall in check and alerts you if it’s turned off. We just wish there were more to play with. You won’t find nearly the same level of customization as a paid security suite. MSE lets you configure a scheduled scan, for example, but you can’t schedule a Quick scan one day and a Full scan on another. It’s also frustrating that you’re unable to pause scans, only cancel them outright.
With an improved scan engine and the same stellar protection as before, Microsoft Security Essentials is still the freebie AV app to beat.
Light on resources; unobtrusive; integrates well with Windows.
Short on features; scan speed still needs work.
Free, www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials
With the release of NIS 2011, it’s apparent Symantec is still trying to shed its lingering image in power-user circles as a resource pig, perhaps a little too hard at times. The new user interface is sleek and sexy with plenty of configuration options to drill into, but it’s also a little daunting for less savvy PC users. It’s the polar opposite of Microsoft Security Essentials, and if you’re experienced with computers, that’s great. Your Aunt Agnes, however, probably won’t make heads or tails out of it all.
Norton’s redesigned UI wins on sex appeal but suffers from a case of information overload.
The main window provides on/off switches for a variety of modules, and if you dive into the Settings menu, you’ll find a whole bunch of additional tools. It’s sheer overload for Aunt Agnes, who won’t understand the difference between Browser Protection, Safe Surfing, and Download Intelligence, all of which appear on the main interface. Hover over any of these, however, and Norton does a serviceable job explaining what they are.
Unlike last year’s version, trying to trip up NIS with our malware samples proved futile. Symantec upgraded its SONAR technology, which pays close attention to how a program behaves rather than relying solely on virus definitions. The idea is to catch zero-day threats that slip into the wild, and it worked beautifully with our contaminated archive. NIS also shields against potentially harmful websites, though you can still truck through if you suspect it’s a false positive.
Installing Norton had no impact on our test bed’s boot time, and system scans were among the fastest of the bunch. We’re beating what’s left of a dead horse at this point, but this isn’t the same Norton from three-plus years ago. Our only real complaint is that Symantec perhaps caters a little too much to enthusiasts and risks alienating some mainstream users.
Fast scan engine; low system impact.
Confusing interface for inexperienced computer users; lacks a virtual keyboard.
$70 (1 Year, 3 PCs), http://us.norton.com
Like Norton, McAfee’s struggling to overcome an unflattering reputation among the tech-literate in hopes of expanding its user base beyond the OEM crowd, and last year’s completely retooled version went a long way toward that goal.
Not much has changed in the 2011 version. It’s still easy to navigate, comparatively light on resources (versus pre-2010 versions), and malware detection is still a mixed bag. McAfee started off strong by breezing through our initial spyware and virus tests, and we nearly finished bombarding the suite with our expanded collection of dirty files without incident. But when a zero-day test file slipped past McAfee undetected, our test bed gave up the ghost and entered a BSoD loop we couldn’t fix. McAfee isn’t the only program that had trouble recognizing the file; we uploaded it to Virus Total (www.virustotal.com) and only 12 out of 42 virus scanners flagged it as malicious. Nevertheless, McAfee’s behavioral-based scanning didn’t detect anything was wrong, and that’s troubling.
Like many antivirus suites, McAfee uses a color-code system. A green bar means all systems are go. If anything needs your attention, it will turn red.
We turned to the malware experts to see if our findings mirrored theirs. Virus Bulletin denied McAfee a VB100 award because it let a virus from its WildList—a list of currently active viruses in the wild—slip through undetected, and according to AV-Test.org’s test results, McAfee performs below the industry average in protecting against zero-day threats. Not good.
McAfee isn’t without merits. The two-way firewall is incredibly easy to configure, and for mobile warriors, the 2011 update adds CPU monitoring intended to improve battery life. It does this by delaying automatic definition updates and other background tasks when the system disk is in an idle state. And contrary to popular assumption, McAfee had little impact on system performance. Kudos for all that, but when the rubber meets the road, McAfee’s airbag may fail to deploy, sending you crashing through Windows.
Uncluttered UI; configuring the firewall is a breeze.
Over-reliance on virus signatures leaves you vulnerable to zero-day threats.
$40 (1 year, 3 PCs), http://home.mcafee.com
Comments are closed on this article
Paul_Lilly
March 22, 2011 at 12:04pm
From the introduction:
"To find out, we’re pitting the 2011 versions of last year’s top five performing AV applications against five security suites we’ve never before reviewed. The two exceptions are ESET Smart Security, which hasn’t been overhauled since our last roundup, and Kaspersky Internet Security 2011, which we already evaluated and gave a 9 verdict / Kick Ass award to for its rich (and useful) feature-set and insane level of protection."
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/kaspersky_internet_security_2011_review
shivan
March 23, 2011 at 12:17pm
I would really like to have all the reviews you have done on any security software to be together and dated along with version numbers. Maintain a master chart that you add to and remove from when you review a newer version. My initial take was that you skipped every product I have on my 6 PC's at home. I know we could search, but a little effort on your part to organize it would make it easier on everyone and we could avoid the you skipped this and that comments. JMHO.
