AntiVirus Reviews

Norton 360 is Symantec’s all in one security, and the latest version is the version5.0. While the version 4.0 had included a lot of new features such as, change in graphics user interface, the prominent colours matching the black and gold colours of the suites sibling Norton Internet Security. The ineffective spam filter was replaced with a much effective Symantec BrightMail, offering about 20% better performance.

Symantec claims that this newest version Norton 360 Version 5.0 comes with a much better performance in all areas including virus detection. The new additions to the suite include SONAR v3.0 as well as System Insight. This version has received a makeover sporting realistic animations and icons. The backup and restore utility has also been improved. In the following review, we will not be looking at the suite itself, as we have discussed about it in detail here in Norton 360 review, however, we will be looking at all the changes and additions made to the suite.

Design changes:

The major of the design changes is the change in Norton’s logo with a checkmark and logo. This logo might look familiar because, Norton got Verisign last year, and it has managed to integrated technologies in a single efficient package. In the last year’s version, the interface was not completely standard user friendly; no changes in settings could be made in this mode. In the latest version, this has been changed to a certain extent. However, it has not been changed to the desired extent, for instance, the StartUp manager allows only the Admin to access the account.

Installation of Version 5.0 Norton 360:

For installation, it requires a couple of restarts, which is not unexpected. However, we found that those virus signatures are not updated immediately. While Live Updates run, the suite downloaded a whooping 98.16MB worth of updates.

Lab Results:

Symantec’s claim that the Norton 360 V5.0 all-in-one security suite has an improved performance is confirmed with the test results. The suite has received a VB 100% from the famous Virus Bulletin. As far as virus detection and removal is concerned, both the WestCoast labs and ICSA have certified the suite. AV Test gave the suite pretty high scores for protection, usability and repair of threats too. The AV Comparatives has given the software suite an Advanced +, which is the highest rating for malware eradication and a lesser Advanced for proactive measures for new malwares. Dennis Technology labs with Trend and ESET labelled Norton 360 v5 as the best performing product.

World Protection map:

With this suite, you are not just provided with a world map of the top city threats, it sports quite a unique Norton Crime Index. When you click on it, a browser window opens citing the percentage of cyber crime that is increasing or decreasing. This part also provides with live news feeds on the most recent product releases etc.

Norton Download Insight:

The Norton Download Insight secures the system from the dangers that arise by downloading. It does so by not just checking each and every file against its own database, but also the database of the other Norton software users. While Download Insight previously supported only Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers, this time it has support for a range of browsers and clients such as, MSN Explorer, QQ Chat, Bit Torrent, Opera Browser, ThunderBird Email, Outlook Express, AOL browser, Limewire, Windows Mail, Safari Browser, Chrome Browser, Yahoo Messenger and FileZilla.

Firewall:

With the firewall feature, you will be able to check everything that goes in and out your computer, making the list very crammed. One big disadvantage is that, the software does not allow to search for programs through its firewall list and hence, you will end up going through every entry to stop or activate a program. If the software finds a file that comes in as a false positive, there is not way you will be able to ignore it in an intuitive way. Which means, once the file is caught, you will have to disable the antivirus and restore the file through Security History, go through the settings, and then put it into the exclusion list. We feel that the Full History option should be able to list the complete history, which Norton has not done. Instead, it gives only provides the threats in the list that are caught, with no indication of the files that have been ignored or closed with no action taken.

Vulnerability Protection:

As far as vulnerability protection is concerned, Norton does not just leave with the basic virus protection. It also keeps an eye on the most vulnerable programs on PC, which if not updated regularly, will easily be attacked by malware. The PC programs are nothing but the common applications that are based on the internet, such as, Silverlight, JAVA and Adobe Flash.

Safe Web Scanner:

The Safe Web Scanner is one of the newest features that checks news feeds and Facebook walls for bad links and other threats from the Norton Control Centre. We felt that the Facebook integration feature was not as intuitive as it could have been as too much interaction is required in order to let the user know that such an option is actually available, which should have been just available as default. In case you suspect a site, just click on the Safe Web and enter the UR, which will check if the site is safe or not, the suite will also check its huge database to see it has been rated as malicious or not.

Parental controls:

Symantec has also increased protection on parental controls in Norton 350 Version 5.0 Security Software, which will give the parents instant insight on what their children are doing online from anywhere remotely. With this account, you get web access to what the kid is looking, searching and accessing online. It is not a simple information on browser history, but also a neat and categorically divided information age wise that is offered support by Norton experts and community. Though it is not fully featured like the NetNanny software, but it is a good start for a suite that is mainly aimed at the home users.

Verdict:

The Symantec Norton 360 is one of the best firewalls and offered consistently high lab results. It is now much better at malware removal and has very low performance impact with a simple as well as efficient spam filtering and high end phishing protection. Though there have been a few disadvantages, this is the best security that your money can buy now. Symantec Norton 360 is just an all in all security suite, which is a install and forget suite.

Norton 360 Version 5.0 Antivirus – Specification Table

Lab	Symantec
Software name	Norton 360
Suite type	All in one security suite
License type	Complete package
License quantity	One year three users
Package type	Retail
OS Supported	Microsoft® Windows® XP (32-bit) with Service Pack 2 or later Home/Professional/Media Center, Microsoft® Windows Vista® (32-bit and 64-bit) Starter/Home Basic/ Home Premium/Business /Ultimate, Microsoft® Windows® 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) Starter/Home Basic/ Home Premium/Professional/Ultimate
Minimum hardware	300-MHz or faster processor 256 MB of RAM; 512 MB recommended 300 MB of available hard disk space Must meet minimum operating system requirements for Microsoft Windows XP/Vista/Win7 Internet Explorer® 6.0 or higher, or Mozilla Firefox® 3.0 or higher Internet connection – a high-speed connection is required for online backup
Anti-Virus	Yes
FireWall	Yes
Anti-Spyware	Yes
Other Key features	PC Tune-up Web, File, Email protection IM Antivirus Application Control Proactive Defence Network Attack Blocker Identity protection Pulse updates Worm protection Rootkit protection Anti-Spam Network Monitor Anti-Phishing Anti-Banner Parental Control Back-up Malware protection Bot protection
Online backup	2GB

In the past couple of years AVG Internet Security has gone through a bit of a revolution, by moving away from its origins of security suite and antivirus and it has now become extremely professional by offering features such as online backup, high end parental control as well as PC clean-up. The design engineers in AVG also seem to be making some major positive changes to the core protection technology, and the latest AVG Internet Security 2012 is the best example. Let us see if each and every component lives up to the great expectations.

Features retained with some additions:

2011’s AVG Internet Security main window had a whopping fourteen icons of security and this year’s feature has retained all of the identical features, but with the shrinking of icons to just eight of them. There are three more icons giving you access to AVG PC Tuneup 2011, AVG Family Safety as well as AVG LiveKive internet backup.

Resource usage:

Without any doubts all of you would agree that the most important thing that the users will be looking for in a security suite is minimal usage of the resources. Nobody like their system to slowdown, and this is definitely mandatory than any great protection against malware. The good news is that, the AVG Internet Security 2012 suite did very well in performance with less resource usage. The AVG Internet Security Suite 2012 just took 6% longer then the same system without the suite. The antivirus suites will check the files on access, if they try to overdo the protection, they will end up slowing down the file operations. All of the web protection components including the LinkScanner does not seem to slow down the browsing experience in any way. AVG Internet Security 2012 did not have the lowest impact on any particular test, but it did have lesser impact than an average suite. Overall AVG has delivered on its promise to reduce the system resource usage.

Internal changes:

There are some enhancements made under the hood that are not visible. The latest addition is the AVG Accelerator that has promised to increase the download speeds from Download and YouTube and few others too. While it was a bit tough to measure the speeds, the YouTube videos did seem to be loading a lot quicker. The team at AVG suggest that you keep looking at your system for things that may aid in speeding up things and for now, what the suite does, is to request you to restart the browser when it detects using up heaps of memory.

LinkScanner:

The AVG 2012 Internet Security Package also has a feature known as LinkScanner that looks for malicious codes on webpages and it also manages to know what is running in the web browser. With the help of the latter feature, the suite gets the power to handle some of the more dynamic threats codes that seems to be spread of a number of WebPages. As far as scareware is concerned, AVG Internet Security 2011 makes use of the patent pending technique in order to detect the scareware program that is fully based on its user prompts and actions. With the help of this technology, it will be able to detect some of the latest scareware without the need of a file signature.

Firewall:

AVG Internet Security 2012’s Firewall has protection profiles including Home network, business and public network, with each of the profile having its own complete configuration settings. We recommend that you do not fiddle with these setting without any instruction from the support team. This Firewall was able to manage the work of stealthinng all the system’s ports. The suite passed out with flying colours in most of our web-attack testing. Like we had mentioned previously, the LinkScanner was able to put off attack over the network by both identifying and blocking the exploits. AVG has database of the known trusted programs and by default, the firewall seems to be automatically configuring the network programs for such programs. And, as far as the unknown programs are concerned, the old school query pops up, asking you if each and every program has to be allowed for complete entrée, only to the networks that are identified to be safe, or, it will just provide no access at all.
This type of program control is not so impressive. The latest firewalls like the one in Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 and Norton have employed the in-built aptitude in order to make security decisions. Just requesting the user to make a decision seems like getting into trouble. The suite seems to be still vulnerable to some of the basic attacks that will be a piece of cake for a malware coder and easily turn off the protection. All that is required is to set up the start-up status of the essential windows services to AVG to be disabled and then force in a reboot too. Suites such as TrendMicro Titanium, Norton and ZoneAlarm simply will not allow for any external change of this setting. Overall, the firewall does not match the quality of the antivirus, using the out of date user input technique for program control. We are looking for more enhancements in this area.

Online protection:

There is a feature known as Online Shield that is a component of the LinkScanner and is not available on the free version. While re-downloading the malware about half of the preexisting samples, and that is just average performance. The common features included in both the paid and free versions include the LinkScanner’s Surf-Shield as well as Search-Shield features. While the former looks out for the websites that hot spiteful exploits and takes away the users from such sites and the latter feature marks of the hazardous result links of the famous search engines. The Surf Shield feature is also supposed to be keeping you off from the fraud phishing websites, however, when the feature was put into test, it did not do a good job. Norton is the best when it comes to this task.

Social network protection:

Just like the antivirus suite, this 2012 AVG Internet Security also installs a tool bar offering some safe search and quick access to Facebook and few of the other features. With the PCAnalyzer tools, they check your system to see if it will be able to benefit by using AVG PC TuneUp 2011, which can be bought separately and then integrated into the security suite.

Malware protection:

Being free does not mean that AVG is any less on protection, it possess the same set of malware security as in the case of the full version. In our malware testing, the AVG Internet Security Suite 2012 managed to install with no issues and was also faster than most of the other leading suites in the market. One strange thing was that, we found the rootkit scan to be separate from the complete system scan. The suite was able to detect 88% of the threats, which is extremely good. The suite also performed quite well at malware blocking and it also managed to point out all the scareware and rootkit samples.

Spam filtering:

Everybody are not looking for a spam filter on the client side. Most of the email accounts will get filtered at lots of layers and even by the service provider. The AVG is capable of filtering the entering POP3 email accounts and also provide an identify marker in the subject line of the spam messages. This gets integrated with the Microsoft Outlook in order to immediately transfer these messages into the spam folder. The people who are making use of some other mail client will end up defining a rule in order to divert this spam.

Similar to the 2011 version of the suite, the current version of the suite also has advanced settings dialog box includes lots and lots of detailed settings meant for the spam filter. The only setting that we believe that an average user may be able to make changes to, is the big slider that allows you to control the spam filtering levels. The default level, which is the least aggressive one will avoid the false positives, but the down side is that, it will allow for more spam to pass through, with the higher level filtering more spam, but then, this will throw out the good mails too. The spam filter did not take longer than the time it would have taken without the filter. However, the bad news here is that, the 2012 version of AVG Internet Security was not as good as the 2011 version, allowing about 50% of spam inside the inbox, compared to the 8% of last year. If you are serious about throwing out the spam mails, we recommend that you just turn off AVG’s spam filtering and install Cloudmark.

Parental controls:

While many of the security suites included parental controls, the closest AVG comes to including parental controls, is the integration of separately bought AVG Family Safety. With AVG’s current promotion, you will be able to get this extra feature for free with a meagre donation. On the System Tools component, you will get a range of options to analyse what has been happening inside your system. On the processes tab, you also get to see whose behaviour is being watched by the suite, along with the particular behaviours it is looking for, and these behaviours include both good and bad, such as having a visible window and Windows directory. All the programs will be launched at start-up, including the complete path name and system location too from which the program launches. You also get an option to delete any of the start-up entry, and note that what you delete is permanently gone. Unless you are the AVG programmer, do not try to fiddle with settings of LSPs tables, connections and browser extensions.

Verdict:

The best thing about AVG Internet Security 2012 is its antivirus component. It managed to score quite well in malware removal and blocking tests. As we had mentioned earlier, we were totally impressed by the very low impact on system resources, which is quite a considerable improvement over the 2011 version. Firewall however, was not so impressive and was old fashioned and worse, it could be disabled programmatically by a malware. The antispam let lots of spam mails slip through and the antiphishing component of LinkScanner was also lagging quite a bit behind the best in the market. overall, it is a pretty good suite, however, you will be able to get the best elements of AVG Internet Security 2012 for free on AVG Anti-Virus 2012. For a complete protection, we will always recommend Norton Internet Security 2011.

AVG Internet Security Suite 2012 – Software Details

Lab	AVG
Software name	AVG Internet Security 2012
Suite type	Internet Security
License type	Standard
License Validation period	1 year
License quantity	3 users/ 4 users
Minimal System requirements	Intel Pentium 1.5 GHz or faster 512 MB of RAM memory 1000 MB free space
Recommended system requirements	Intel Pentium 1.8 GHz or faster 512 MB of RAM memory 1550 MB free space
OS Compatibility	Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 7
Email	Yes
Instant Messaging	Yes
Anti-Virus	Yes
FireWall	Yes
Anti-Spyware	Yes
Anti-Phishing	Yes
Anti-Spam	Yes
Special Operating Modes	No
Tune up	No
Parental Control	No (extra)
Data Backup	No (extra)
Support	FAQ, forum, videos, email; free phone support in US, UK, Canada.

Panda has recently released their 2012 range of suites, and this Spanish developer has decided to put up the same three solutions that Panda previously had, including, Antivirus Pro that offers essential protection, the Internet Security suite that allows you to stay safe online, and finally, there is the Global Protection, which offers you the complete package of information integrity and total protection. Every computer deserves at least an antivirus, else it will be infected, by god knows what. A complete protection package offers a lot more layers of protection.

In the following review, we will see about one such complete protection packages, the Panda Global protection 2011 that is equipped with everything you can expect out of a complete package, such as, backup, system tune-up and even has a few extras that you usually do not expect. We feel that Panda has jumped into the 2012 version too quickly, but it does offer the company an opportunity to make changes and also improve the suite. One thing we know for sure is that, it has everything that a complete package has, let us see if it delivers on performance.

The antivirus and firewall components of the Panda Global Protection 2012 are very similar to the ones found in Panda Antivirus Pro 2012. Some of the other identical features include USB Vaccine, Safe Browser and a few of the other bonus features.

User Interface:

The first thing that we found to be new in the Global Protection 2012 is the new user interface. This user interface has been designed to address most of user’s complaints about the previous version.

Installation:

The installation of the suite was just fine, and the download was quite reasonable at 70 megabytes and comes with nice and significantly cut down definitions. Like most of the current antivirus suites, a pre-existing malware intruded with the installation of Panda’s Global Protection 2012. Fortunately, it was able to install and run in Safe Mode, that solved most of the issues, and its SafeDisk bootable rescue CD was able to fix the rest of the remaining process. You do have quite a few customisation options, so make sure that you read them. With the custom installation, you will be able to install individual components, and you also get an auto learning firewall option for common programs, and even permission to send questionable files to the cloud. The installer did ask for a restart, but it started regardless.

There are about four scanning options to scan; your entire system, hard disk, mail, other items and detect vulnerabilities. We felt the absence of a quick scan, but the real time shield does a pretty quick job. The complete system scan is also pretty quick at 5 to 16 megabytes per second. We found the suite to be possessing some excellent multi-core efficiency when compared to the other average antivirus systems. In just 20 minutes, the suite scanned about 20000 files.

 

Lab ratings:

As far as independent lab testings are concerned, even though Panda’s suite does not always manage to be the topper or even get close to the high scores obtained by the other leading antivirus suites such as F-Secure, Norton, Kaspersky or a few others, it still does a decent job and stays above average. In one of the whole product test conducted by AV Comparatives org, Panda secured the 5th spot out of 17 suites that were tested. In this test, the suite blocked about 97.4% of the threats, while the top scorer Norton caught a whopping 99.3%.

Mastering the Scareware:

At the time of testing, Panda Global Protection 2012 Suite was able to detect about 85% of the threats, however, failed to completely finish off what it managed to find. For instance, it left behind heaps of root kit samples that continue to be active even after the suite allegedly removing the threats. What the Global protection 2012 excelled at was scareware, with cent percent detection.

Malware detection:

While most security suites do a much better job of keeping out the malware in an already clean system, the Panda Global protection 2012 just roots out to the malware that already exists. Overall, the malware blocking skills of this suite was not so impressive. Most of the total security suites managed in detection and elimination of over 75% of threats on-sight, but Panda Global Protection 2012 caught just 30%, and it did stop most of the remain threat while launching or at the time of installation, which works out to be an overall detection rate of 83%. When we tried to download those samples again, the suite stopped about 11% of the threats at URL itself and the rest 33% was eliminated once the download is completed. The G Data Internet Security 2012 was capable of blocking 79% of the samples and McAfee Total Protection 2011 blocked 87% of them.

Firewall:

The firewall component in Panda Global Protection 2012 is quite similar to what you can find in the optional module of Panda Antivirus. This firewall component does all of the basics quite well. While testing, it was capable of acquiring all of the ports and also make the system invisible outside attack. Just like G Data, by default, it runs in automatic mode, taking own decisions on the which program should be allowed to access the internet on its own. There will be pop up questions coming up only when the firewall is taken out of the automatic mode.

When we tested the suite with about thirty attacks, it recognised and stopped just six of them. The Symantec Norton 360 identified and blocked each and every one of it, and it even identified each of it by name, whereas the Kaspersky Pure Total Security identified all but one. Though none of the intruders breached security, we expect that at least the firewall should be able to identify such attacks. The Panda Global Protection did not provide direct attack over its Registry settings or activate the processes, but we were able to easily disable it by just changing the configuration of eight of its services. We strongly believe that the self protection should be able to prevent attacks on these services too. When the firewall is considered as an added bonus, this is just sufficient, but when taken as a main component where the firewall protection is essential, the firewall component of Panda Global Protection 2012 can be considered only as average.

Safe Browser:

The Safe Browser feature of Panda is usually included in both the antivirus suite and the Global Protection. But, this module can be downloaded even without purchasing any of the Panda products. The Safe Browser is simply a modified version of Firefox that runs under Linux inside of a virtual machine within the Sun’s VirtualBox application. It is worth mentioning that the Safe Browser is quite a huge part of installation, and it is pretty slow to load in comparison to products such as SafeCentral 2.6 and the other sandbox parts of the Avast Internet Security 6.0, as well as Kaspersky Internet Security 2011. The safe browser needs to be streamlined into a single install with the correct components.

We did run into a few issues while testing the module. This feature does completely isolate your browsing from other activity and secures your privacy by deleting the browsing history and also completely resisting the Windows centric web attacks. We think that most of the users will end up finding this module to be extremely slow and quite awkward too.

USB Vaccine:

As we had mentioned previously, the independent antivirus suite of Panda and the Global Protection 2012 seemed to have a lot of the bonus features in common. One such tool is the USB Vaccine, which can also be downloaded for free. The USB Vaccine stops the spread of malware that enters through the USB drives. It does so by disabling the auto run in either some specific USB ports or just the complete system. There is also a vulnerability scanner that gives a report on the missed patches and even comes up with a Windows Update link for a fix.

Network Management:

There is also a Network Management module that gives a report on the computers in the network that are running on Panda and if you are out of date. The module also presents a network blacklist, which allows you to view all the devices that are connected to the network and gives you the ability to block any of them from connecting to your computer.

Spam Filtering:

The features that we have seen so far, are also available in the Panda Antivirus standalone suite of 2012, but the Spam Filtering module is available only in the Global Protection 2012. This module filters all of the POP3 mail and can even handle any sort of account in case you make use of Microsoft Outlook for your email client. The settings involved with this module are quite minimal, and most of you may not want to make a lot of changes from what is set as default. When we measured the download speed, with and without the Spam Filter ON, there was no significant difference. This is not something that you can take for granted, because, in G Data’s suite, with its spam filter module on, the email downloading too about four to five times longer than usual. No effect on the download speeds does not mean that the filtering job was accurate; while testing, we found that, in about 8000 real-world mails, Panda Global Protection 2012 filtered over 10% of valid personal mails as spam. It also tossed about 1.4% of bulk mail, and about 7.3% of absolute spams were able to secure a spot in the inbox.

In some of the recent antivirus suites, only the eScan Internet Security 11 was capable of putting in more false positives than Panda, with over 25% of valid mail in the spam folder. The 2011 version of the Panda Global Protection suite missed just 1% of the valid mail, and let about 15% of valid mail slip through. We feel that marking valid personal mails as spam is a much bigger issue than letting the spam mails in the inbox. If you receive innumerable mails every day, we suggest that you use Cloudmark DesktopOne Basic 1.2 for spam protection, instead of losing your important messages. This suite is available for free online. This suite does not block any valid mail, though lets a negligible amount of spam into the inbox.

Identity Theft:

As far as Identity Theft is concerned, Panda Global Protection 2012 tackles it in two different ways. Firstly, it requests for the confirmation of any of the time specific user defined confidential information, when it is about to be sent from the system, and secondly, it also blocks access to the phishing websites.

Anti phishing:

The anti-phishing feature of Panda Global Protection 2012 Software Suite was simply dismal when we tested the suite against some of the verified phishing URLs. The suite fell leaps and bounds behind Norton Internet Security 2011, however, most of the anti-phishing suites lag behind Norton. But, it is notable that only the BullGuard Internet Security Suite 10 and TrustPort Total Protection 2011 fell behind Panda. If you are serious about anti-phishing, you can consider G Data, Ad Aware Total Security 1.0 and BitDefender Total Security 2011. Ideally, protection of all your confidential information begins when you enter information such as bank account number, password, credit card number etc. This private information is stored using one-way encryption, so that this piece of vital information will not by itself become a security risk. However, the one thing that you should be aware of is that, there are no options available to actually block the transmission. Even with the Windows accounts that have limited privileges, Panda Global Protection 2012 just asks if you will allow transmission. This means, this feature cannot be used to keep your children from revealing your private information such as home address and phone number.

Parental controls:

The parental control feature of the Global Protection 2012 is pretty limited too. It is capable of filtering web content for each of the Windows user account. The parents get to choose from the predefined profiles or, you can also choose from 18 categories and 64 sub-categories. Finally, if you do choose to set parental controls, you will have to set a password in order to protect the settings.

The content filtering system offered by Global Protection 2012 is completely browser independent, but it is not capable of handling any secure HTTPS websites. This means, if your kid is a techie, he can surf the web without any restriction whatsoever, just by using a secure anonymous proxy. What Panda does do us, provide you with a report on all the attempts to visit the banned sites. Unfortunately, the data in each of the five columns is so wide that it cannot be read in the default format, and even when all of the columns are expanded to the width of the content, the reports still ends up being really wide. That is all what Panda Global Protection 2012 has to offer with parental control. It does not have the capability of monitoring chat, limit the games and videos based on ratings or even schedule the allowed Internet time. These are some of the advanced features that are usually found in full-scale parental control systems.

Kaspersky seems to be offering a fully featured parental control that seems to be offering solutions better than standalone products. Norton depends on the Norton Online Family Premier, which is an impressive product in itself. If you have utmost concerns about your kids using the net, download the free version of Norton Online Family, or even AVG Family Safety. All we can say is that, do not rely on Panda.

Backup:

The Local Backup offered is not much different from the last year’s edition. When automatic backup is enabled, the suite automatically takes a backup of specific file types including photos, contacts and office documents. You get to choose which file type is backed up and even add your own file types for the sake of protection, or just even back up all files in specific folders. By default, the suite retains all of the local backups for a month. There is a wizard that does the task of burning a copy of this back-up to a DVD or CD.

You also get 2GB of online backup for free with the suite, but since it has MozyHome Online Backup, you can just have this 2GB memory free even without buying the software from Panda. Another free subscription that Panda offers is a one year subscription to BeAnywhere Personal Edition that usually costs about 35 pounds. With this subscription, you can remotely access your computer and also sync files between systems.

The antivirus suites offer heaps more in the backup department. For instance, the Webroot Internet Security Complete 2011 has joined hands with SugarSync to offer about 10GB of online backup, with some other impressive features like remote access, syncing capabilities and file sharing. Similarly, Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2011 offers 10GB of backup along with file sharing and syncing included, Norton 360 also comes with about 2GB of online backup by Symantec, and with the Premier edition, you get 25GB.

System tune-up:

In Panda Global Protection 2012 has a tab called Optimise Performance, but there is nothing that you will be able to do manually. It has a cleanup tool that will just empty the recycle bin, discard the useless files and wipe off IE’s cookies, history and cache. This can be simply done using Windows Disk Cleanup feature and Internet Explorer’s Delete Browsing History option. We wonder why a disk defragmenter is offered when the same feature has been built into Windows.

This is quite disappointing as the other suites have a lot of options to optimise the system performance. While Norton 360 will be able to manage startup items, and it also gives options for delayed launch to ease the boot process. The suite comes up with with a diagnostic report that points out some issues that will slow down the system. BitDefender and Norton 360, both will delete the erroneous Registry items and useless items. Even AVG Internet Security 2011 does a through clean-up using the AVG PC Tuneup 2011.

Most recent security software do not put a lot of drag on the activities of the system. They are aware that the consumers will not accept a security suite that tends to slow down the system. We were surprised to find that the performance of Panda Global Protection 2012 was lower than last year’s suite. For instance, the browsing takes over 80% longer with the Panda security suite employed, this is about 28% higher than last year. The only other suite that performed worst than Panda was eScan. With the suite installed, a lengthy file, move and copy operations took only 10% longer; this is quite good.

Verdict:

Overall, we were quite disappointed with Panda Global Protection 2012 in almost every area of it. when it came to malware removal, blocking, anti phishing and anti spam, this version scored lesser than the 2011 edition. The backup and cleanup modules do not even close to what the high end consumers are used to. A number of extras the suite claims to offer are available for free even without purchasing the suite. The final nail on the coffin is that, this Panda Global Protection impacts the system more than its processor.

If you are looking for a good performer, the one with tune-up, Backup and all that, the best option will be Norton 360 Version 5.0. Another good alternative is Kaspersky Pure Total Security if you are not looking for any online backup. If you are more interested in powerful and flexible backup, as well as file syncing, then the Trend Mico Titanium Maximum Security 2011 or Webroot Internet Security Complete 2011 are great options. With such range of options available, at more or less the same price, we do not find a reason why you should opt for the Panda Global Protection 2012.

Panda Global Protection 2012 Suite – Specification Details

Manufacturer	Panda
Software Name	Panda Global Protection 2012
Suite type	Complete protection
License type	Three users
License Validation period	1 year
Package type	Complete package
Operating System	Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista 32-bit 64-bit Windows XP 32-bit
Software Requirements	Processor: Pentium 300 MHz or faster RAM: 128 MB without TruPrevent 512MB with TruPrevent (1 GB recommended) Hard Disk: 275 MB free space MS Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
Supported browsers	Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher Mozilla Firefox 2 or higher Google Chrome
Anti-Virus	Yes
FireWall	Firewall with WiFi security that blocks intruders and hackers, even in your wireless network.
Identity Protection	Confidential information filter that protects your personal data
Anti-Phishing	Yes
Anti-Spam	Yes
Safe browsing	Panda Safe Browser
Panda SafeCD	The new Panda SafeCD can clean all types of malware from your computer if you cannot start Windows. It connects to the Internet to get the last antivirus technologies every time you need it.
SOS Virus	This rapid response service lets you submit suspicious files directly to PandaLabs’ engineers.
Other security features	Collective Intelligence Behavior analysis Panda USB Vaccine Virtual Keyboard Remote PC Access File Encryption File Shredding
Special Operating Modes	Multimedia/Gaming Mode Home Network Manager
Tune up	Yes, tune-up utilities
Data Backup	Yes Online backup: 2GB Online Backup
Support	Complete Services: 24h, 365 days technical assistance through the Technical Support by e-mail and web.