McAfee Total Protection 2010 Review
McAfee’s new 2010 product line has introduced a new vertical look that is so drastically different from any of the major security programs that are currently on the market. Most of the features in its products like McAfee Internet Security, McAfee AntiVirus Plus and McAfee Total Security are not really new, but owing to the radical presentation it looks kind of glossed over. In the following review, we will see in detail about the McAfee Total Protection 2010 which offers you and your family the ultimate PC and online security with accelerated performance. With their previous suite condemned real bad, this time around McAfee have put in their best showing some real good improvement in almost all aspects has made a real effort and shown improvement in all the areas.
McAfee now comes loaded with more goodies in the suite in comparison to its competitors. The 2010 suite now has an all new UI that has manage to fine-tune focus groups along with user surveys presenting status info and features just the way users would like to see it. The suite is now available with an innovative Active Protection Technology enabling faster updates and enhanced detection of malicious threats; the suite also offers all of the other major features including anti-spyware, anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-phishing, 2-way firewalling, together with the parental controls, identity protection and a powerful site safety advisor. Existing users need to note that the VirusScan Plus now has a new name – AntiVirus Plus. The suite comes very close to everybody’s choice, Norton Internet Security 2010.
Installation:
The installation of McAfee Total Protection 2010 runs smoothly without any hassle. Though there seemed to be no real issues with the installation process, a casual browsing on the web for user opinions unearthed some sore experiences from users with installation issues wherein the suite doesn’t run properly post installation or wouldn’t install at all in the first place. The download is a minute stub installer that manages to grab the installation files from the net when users run it. McAfee uses what is called a stub installer. The file that you download is small, barely a couple of megabytes. When you run it, it connects to McAfee’s servers to download and install the full program. McAfee has greatly enhanced their scanning performance greatly by getting the files indexed and scanning just new files or files that have been edited. When the installation is done, it asks you to perform a preliminary scan that could take a long time but will speed up the later scans. You will be able to decline a scan at installation, but keep in mind that whenever your first scan is initiated, it will take much longer than the subsequent scans. After the scan, you can pick and choose what components of Total Protection 2010 to install.
Uninstallation of the McAfee Total Protection 2010 suite would still require going through either a third party uninstaller or the Windows uninstaller, as it still doesn’t have its own tool to do so. With smaller programs, that is not such a big deal, but in extensive suites with hooks deep into your registry, it kind of looks unprofessional to not offer one. Users of other security suites switching over to McAfee might have to note that it doesn’t really play nice with the already existing suite and demands entirely removal of the suite before it completes its installation process; That friendly huh? Also ironically it also offers link to the online sites that aides with the uninstallation process.
User Interface:
The new user interface hopes to give Total Protection Suite 2010 a new, refreshed look and the removal of a few less-used features and a few tweaks here and there, really give this security suite a push in the right direction. As mentioned earlier, McAfee’s older versions came with a real cluttered and clunky UI that literally makes you think twice even before trying your hands on it. However, the latest 2010 version of Total Protection has a new interface that looks like night and day compared to the old interface.
As in the case of virtually all of the modern security suites, the main screen features a status indicator shaded green that indicates things to be secure. And, based on the focus group input, McAfee adds a reassuring “No Action Required” note to the all secure banner. The top banner provides you with access to scans and updates, along with some firewall and subscription information. There is also a rotating message that reports stats on number of threats removed by the latest scan. By clicking on the features area below, it launches the commonly used actions. There is a separate Navigation Centre Window offers a simple directory style access to all of the features, common and otherwise. You gain quick access via the features menu to spyware or virus protection, parental controls, data backup, Web protection and PC optimisation.
Firewall:
The Outgoing Access is the default security level of McAfee Total Protection 2010 firewall providing outgoing access to all programs. In case an unknown program attempts to receive incoming network traffic, McAffee leaves the choice to its users. On a higher level, the “Monitored Access” checks with users when some unknown program tries to gain internet access for the first time. McAfee says, the “Stealth” level also hides the PC from detection. The firewall feature does a great job by way of porting scans along with many other web-based right at the default level, with all ports being stealthed. Everybody would agree to the fact that there needs to be a balanced between security and aggravation in personal firewalls as the traditional firewalls popping up nonstop queries actually do nothing but train users to hang on to clicking “Allow.” Well, McAfee’s decides to stand out from the rest with a default setting that allows all outgoing access including some unknown programs.
A spyware not acknowledged by an antimalware component might practically pass on your personal info to its home base. Though this kind of setup means that there are more pop up queries, we would recommend the users of this suite to crank up the firewall security level a notch from the default. When the security level is set to “Monitored Access”, the suite detects several leak test utilities, such as the programs that attempt to evade program control using techniques found in actual malware. Rest of the leak test utilities gets blocked as malware or potentially unwanted programs. With the real-time scanning for malware being turned off, a couple of leak test utilities do manage to sneak in, but with active defenses, none of them manage to get through. McAfee has included the “Attack Detection” for the handful of the very well known exploits and other attacks; just ten of them in total. We prefer the much more instructive protection offered by Avast internet security 5.0 and Norton Internet Security 2010 among others. For instance, when a website attacks our system, we would like to know about it; even when the exploit fails.
We tried to disable the firewall by changing settings in the Registry. This is something a malicious program could do, and it is a technique that worked against one of the previous versions of McAfee’s Total Security suite. And this time around, we were really pleased to see an “Access denied” message, meaning that our attack failed. Well, it was the same kind of response when we deliberately tried killing the protective processes of McAfee via the Task Manager. On the other hand, we really had no trouble turning off the suite’s essential services. But McAfee did pop up a warning saying security was at risk, but a warning is not much of a help if the user is not nearby. It would be ideal to watch McAfee’s Total Protection completely protecting its services and processes just as Kaspersky or Norton does.
Overall, we are very pleased with the great deal of improvements made over that of the previous edition that failed to completely stealth all ports, did not block all of the exploits and even missed all of the leak tests. However, we think it could still use a little more hardening against attacks.
Network Map:
The McAfee Total Protection 2010 license allows you to install the suite on three computes, which are very likely to be on the same network. You can see all the computers and devices on the “My Network” map and the ones equipped with this suite or the McAfee AntiVirus is identified with a McAfee icon. To establish a mutual relationship between two systems, all you need to do is to tag any of McAfee-equipped PC as trusted, keying in identical passwords onto both of them. This way, both can view each other’s security status and also fix issues on one another’s PC. Though you will not be notified when the security status of the other system changes, you can still get the network map configured in such a way to alert you if the system comes online. Norton’s suite on the other hand, while it does notify you of a remote problem, it does not let you fix it remotely. Again, the version 3 Trend Micro Internet Security Pro comes with a full fledged remote control allowing you to prompt an update or scan, analyze logs, have features turned On/Off and many more.
With McAfee’s suite, you can mark any of your computer or device in McAfee’s network map as an intruder. Doing so, you get instant notifications the very minute there is a network access attempted by prowlers blocking the intruder instantly.
Anti-Spam:
Not many are concerned about Spam filtering, but for those who do, will find that McAfee offers more choices than most. It integrates with Outlook/Outlook Express, Eudora, Thunderbird and Windows Mail, for starters. While majority of the antivirus suites manage only POP3 mail, McAfee goes a step ahead in filtering IMAP, POP3 and Exchange mail. The best part is it can also filter couple of Web-based e-mails. McAfee Total Protection 2010 3 User suite allows users to set 5 stages of spam protection starting with Minimal to Restricted. At the ‘Balanced’ level, you can white list the sender of any message in your e-mail client or import your correspondents from many different address book types; While the ‘Restricted’ level blocks mails that doesn’t originate from a white listed sender. To be clear, you can customise the spam ilter with rules, on the basis of subject line, sender or body. Thus it can also be used to allow emails from a specific email list with a common phrase.
When downloading thousand messages with the spam filter on, it takes about sixty percent longer than with the spam inactive. However, this minor slowdown will not even be noticeable. The McAfee suite did not block any of the newsletters or other valid bulk mail and misfiled just 0.3 percent of valid personal mail as spam. McAfee sure does great when it comes to filtering undeniable spam with a bare 2.4 percent managing to sneak in to the Inbox. One suite that is by far the best in this regard would be AVG Internet Security 9.0, with a score of 1.9%. The all new McAfee suite looks to be great in terms of protection and as you can see, we are happy with it.
Site Advisor:
McAfee Total Protection 2010 comes with SiteAdvisor Plus, which is a browser tool bar that aids you in avoiding the dangerous websites out there. In the beginning, that is, in the earlier years, SiteAdvisor relied solely on web crawlers that actively analysed all the websites. In this system, though the results were quite accurate and detailed, they were usually weeks out of date. Now, though, McAfee’s SiteAdvisor works hand in hand with the company’s “Global Threat Intelligence” and yet manages to use crawlers sometimes for a detailed site analysis. Again, if McAfee users come across a fishy site or a hacked site, SiteAdvisor would be the first to know about it.
Phishing Protection:
Detecting the Phishing or fraudulent sites was notoriously tough for SiteAdvisor in the past, though McAfee has previously added features that are specifically aimed at detecting this kind of ephemeral threat. SiteAdvisor now backed by its new intelligence succeeds wonderfully in identifying phishing sites. Most products we test are not even as effective as Internet Explorer alone, and very few come close to the accuracy of the anti-phishing champ Norton. SiteAdvisor was just one percent behind Norton and 43 percent ahead of Internet Explorer. Job Well done!
SiteAdvisor also managed to flag web sites that it deems to be dangerous, both when you visit then and in the results page of the popular search engines. When we tested SiteAdvisor by trying to download some of the malware sites that we know, we were pleased with its effectiveness. If the suite did not block the URL immediately, it halts the malware download in midway. The best part is that, it even warned about the now defunct sites that had been dangerously when active. The ‘Plus’ part in the Site Advisor Plus that distinguishes it from the free for all edition is the ‘Protected Mode’. When the Protected Mode is enabled, it actively prevents access to any sites that are not rated as completely safe, which even disables the links in search results. All you need to do is to password for the protected mode that you decided on when enabling this feature. The Private Data Protection feature from the older edition is no longer there as it did only the job of blocking the transmission of user specified private data in Web forms. And since it did not encrypt its store of user-specified data it was more of a security risk than a benefit. McAfee thought that the suite’s Active Protection and Site Advisor’s does the job and we agree too. The Password Vault feature was also dropped which was just a simple non-interactive encrypted list of passwords.
Malware Protection:
The malware protection of McAfee Total Protection 2010 is exactly same as that in McAfee AntiVirus Plus. The technology employed by McAfee worked well in the tests, but cannot be said as the best. The on-demand scan of the suite is slightly slower than the average time for the very first time it is run, but remember that the subsequent scans are much quicker. When we challenged the system to clean a malware infested systems, the McAfee Malware Protection does a very good job, but it is also worth mentioning that some of the other suites managed to do a much better job. The suite was more effective in preventing malware attack on an already clean system.
System Impact:
When McAfee first launched the mega suite several years back, it was extremely slow, unwieldy and too hard to steer. The successive versions had cut down its impact on the system performance one step at a time. Fortunately, the current version has taken a big leap from the slow rate and the latest suite is much less of a drag. The suite just adds a 4 percent time to a lengthy series of zip and unzip, tying with eScan Internet Security Suite 10 and Panda Internet Security 2010 for least impact on performance. McAfee adds just 6 percent to the operation of copy and paste; though a lot of suites do a much better job than this, 6% is still good. The suited added about 28% to install and uninstall of large applications using Windows Installer Script, which is little more of an increase, but this is nothing compared to ZoneAlarm and Kaspersky that added over 75%.
The browser test measures how long it takes to visit 100 Web sites and completely load the home page of each. In the previous version of the suite, McAfee more than doubled the time required for this operation. This time around, the suite adds just 29%, which is a very impressive improvement. Finally, coming to the boot time, again the suite took about twice the time last year, and this time, McAfee had put up charts detailing that there has been some significant improvements, and we did find a little improvement; the suite added about 63% to the boot time. Said that, it is nowhere near the low K7 TotalSecurity Version 10.0 with 7% or eScan with just 19%, however, it is just acceptable. As there are heaps of suites that more than double the time. The McAfee Total Protection 2010 is much less of a drag than its predecessors, and in one test it had the least impact of all the recent suites. There is still room for fine-tuning, but overall it is quite good.
Parental Control:
The parental controls of McAfee Total Protection 2010 offers per-user configuration that is based on Windows user accounts. Fortunately, the current McAfee suite is no longer restricted to Limited accounts unlike the previous version. And this feature is especially important to Windows XP users as they need to give kids Administrator accounts. As in the previous version, you get to choose the age range configuring the content filter component, but now there is the option to fine-tune the category of filter for each individual user. This futile filter used for blocking impish pictures and analyzing images is now no longer there; a wise move, McAfee! Parental control system forces the Safe Search to be “On” in Yahoo, Google and Bing with the weekly scheduler defining the time when individual users are allowed to use the Internet, which fairly easy to use and comprehensible.
That was all good news, but coming to the bad news, McAfee is capable of filtering content from specific browsers only which would include IE, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, Chrome, Opera and Flock. This means, all that your kid needs is an obscure browser such that they can happily find a way around all parental controls. So, gotta smart kid? This one is not for you. In addition to this, if your kid has a non-Limited Windows account, the time-schedule feature can be bollixed by changing the system time.
Online Backup:
The Home Grown backup system that was seen in the previous version has been removed completely and is replaced by a partnership with the very popular MozyHome Online Backup. While anybody can get 2 GB of online backup for free from this site, McAfee subscription gets you 2GB each for up to 3 PCs. Now, that is a kind of bonus that you do not get with ZoneAlarm partnering with iDrive or BitDefender’s partnering with SOS Online Backup. The online backup can be upgraded to unlimited storage for an extra £40 a year. But this requires the backup system be configured prior to it starts to work. In case you choose to accept the default settings, it creates a backup for your e-mails, documents, contacts and favorites. As expected, you will be able to back up additional locations or file types; overall, it is very flexible. There is also an indicator that lets you know how much of the allotted 2 GB you have used.
Even as the initial backup takes hours or sometimes even days, once it is complete, backup is created for only the edited files with only actual changes being uploaded. The bandwith for backup can be throttled down, if need be, though giving it a little extra until the initial backup is completed is recommended by McAfee. All versions of a file is stored for as much as 30 days by the backup system and the space used for the same wouldn’t be counted against the 2GB provided. You can either restore a particular file or its earlier version from the backup itself or even treat it as a local drive using it to drop/drag and manipulate files. Though the backup doesn’t really handle “bare-metal restores”, it does take care of your essential data on being put to correct use.
McAfee Tools:
McAfee offers a wide range of tools that are designed to clear out the clutter and let your PC run faster. QucikClean a fairly optimising tool looks kind of little limited for its name. it takes care of eliminating unwanted files, but nothing really much different from what the Windows Disk Cleanup Wizard does. The cleanup tool, Quick Clean hunts and deletes files and junk like temporary system files, orphaned shortcuts, stuff in the Recycle Bin and missing file fragments. It can also be configured to clean up unnecessary and erroneous items in the Registry. But the Registry Cleanup feature worries us a bit. Akin to Trend Micro’s Registry cleaner, QuickClean doesn’t really bother showing you neither stuff that it is planning to delete nor does it report things that has already been deleted. In case the clean up causes any problem, you have no way to recover or even investigate. While we don’t really expect a full preview similar to the one offered by BitDefender and ZoneAlarm’s Registry cleaners, but we sure do appreciate having the power to undo a latest cleanup. QuickClean also has the ability to erase traces of browsing from the IE emptying both the deleted/sent items folder in Outlook, Outlook Express, or Windows Mail. The first time you use it, you must review and choose which items to clean. It was disconcerting to find no way of changing that configuration; turns out you click an unlabeled icon to re-open the configuration settings. Well, it is not really possible to consider the defragmenter as McAfee’s Tool, because all it does is to launch Windows’ built-in defragmenter. Then again, Shredder sure does seem to be a noteworthy gear. It can eradicate sensitive files and overwrites them from say around one to ten times prior to deletion. It can also be configured to shred contents always from a specified location or check with you every time before doing so, unlike BitDefender’s idea of placing the Shred option in the right-click menu of Windows Explorer.
Support:
McAfee offers a wide range of support options which include tutorials, FAQs, and customer service support by phone, online chat, and even e-mail. A subscription to Total Protection Service includes access to 24/7 Gold Technical Support from McAfee.
Verdict:
The McAfee Total Protection 2010 suite is loaded with scores of features and the new interface makes it much easier to understand. The 2010 suite has had some serious improvements in many areas that had long needed a boost. McAfee’s Malware continues to do better when it comes to blocking malware as against clearing out the existing problems, and if you are looking at installing it on an infested PC, well it could be dicey. However, the Total Protection 2010 of McAfee sure does look to be a massive improvement compared to the 2009’s version and it can be taken as a serious consideration if at all you are looking for total protection.
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McAfee Total Protection 2010 3 User Suite – Specification Details
| Lab | McAfee |
| Software name | McAfee Total Protection 2010 |
| Suite type | All-in-one |
| License type | Complete package |
| License Validation period | One year |
| License quantity | Three users |
| Package type | Retail |
| Minimal System requirements | Windows XP SP2, Vista, Windows 7 800MHz processor RAM: 512 MB (Windows XP) 1 GB (Windows Vista and Windows 7) 450 MB available hard disk space Internet Explorer 6 |
| Recommended system requirements | Windows XP SP2, Vista, Windows 7 Intel CORE Duo (1.66 GHz) or equivalent processor RAM:< 1GB (Windows XP and Windows 7) 1.5 GB (Windows Vista) 600 MB available hard disk space Internet Explorer 7 |
| Supported browsers | IE, Firefox, Netscape, Safari, Chrome, Opera and Flock |
| Anti-Virus | Yes |
| FireWall | Yes |
| Anti-Spyware | Yes |
| Anti-Phishing | Yes |
| Anti-Spam | Yes |
| Data Backup | Yes |
| Email server requirements | Microsoft Exchange 2000, Microsoft Exchange 2000 SMB, 2003 Server or Advanced Server, Lotus Domino 5+, 6+ to current 6.5, No mailbox limits |
| New features | Active Protection Quickscan Faster performance Enterprise-class anti-spam Power optimization Network monitoring Age-appropriate searching Parental controls support for Google Chrome |
| Key features | Award-winning PC Online security Detects, blocks, and removes viruses, spyware, and adware Identity protection helps you to shop, bank, and trade online safely Parental controls allow your children to go online safely Advanced home network protection with network monitoring |
| Support | Assistance with common issues built directly into the product Free technical support for the entire duration of the product license |
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