PC Tools Internet Security 2011 Review
As you can imagine, PC Tools has not always been a popular name in internet security, but lately it has managed to achieve some impressive detection rates. Most of the security suite vendors focus the limelight on their security suite and all of them also offer a standalone antivirus as well, but naturally the suite get the top billing. At PC Tools, their star attraction is the “Spyware Doctor” Antivirus. Certainly, they will only be too be happy if you opt for PC Tools Internet Security rather than some other suite, but they assume it like Spyware Doctor coming with some bonuses. For a couple of extra pounds, you end up with a decent firewall along with an antispam that is conveniently incorporated with PC Tools’ virus protection and Spyware Doctor together with AntiVirus 2011.
Obviously, the principal job of any Internet Security suite is to offer protection against malware, Viruses and remaining threats that threaten to intervene with your work costing you a fortune. The PC Tools Internet Security 2011 seems to arise as one of the strong ones in the industry, providing some impressive testing results. It comes direct with three licenses for one year.
Protection offered:
PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2011 offers complete internet security by way of a dominant Anti-Virus, Firewall, Anti-Spyware and Spam protection, all of these in a single application. Along with detecting, removing and blocking all kinds of Adware, Trojans, Spyware, Viruses, Keyloggers, Worms and various other threats it also executes Full/Custom scans along with Intelli checking for hidden files, sensible system areas, archives, user documents, manages excluded file lists, creates restore points quarantining infections prior to removal. The most recent 2011 is loaded with couple of additional features like multibrowser protection, advanced memory scanner, enhanced firewall, a download guard, browser protection, anti-phishing to name a few and many more.
Installation:
Installation of an internet security suite cannot get easier than that of the PC Tools suite. It is an advanced technology that is designed especially for individuals, and not experts. Meaning it comes configured by default right out of the box giving the most favorable protection, so all that remains to be done is to simply install it to enjoy immediate and verified ongoing protection. Reboot is required after installation.
Speed and Memory Toll:
The package of PC Tools Internet Security 2011 seems to be one of the heavier options we have ever seen. Some of the extra protection in PC Tools Internet Security 2011 does not come without a speed penalty, though it is not burdened with extraneous features. It has even omitted the parental control module that is found in most suites. Before installing the software, Windows took about two minutes and 26 seconds to start up and all the installed to appear in the utility tray. But, after installation of the suite, the PC took about three minutes to start up, which suggests a performance hit of approximately 3 percent, same as F-Secure Internet Security 2011. With the 2010 edition of security suite requiring double the time to reboot the system, it has been flawlessly fixed in this edition. With this security software being installed, there was a whopping 337MB drop of the available RAM and with the desktop appearing after two minutes, there was continuous CPU activity for 16 seconds with the package getting initialized.
Interface:
PC Tools is taking some definite efforts to make the interface looks and feel more serious, but the simple blue and green design might still looks a little cheap to your eyes. The interface is clear and smart with the areas of protection divided mainly into 4: Virus scan, Antispam, Intelliguard and Firewall, each of which boasts of an individual ancillary settings along with a large button and few other tools that are grouped together column-wise towards the left hand side.
The main window of the suites parallels to the Spyware Doctor in numerous ways. For eg., here also you get to see the 5 five buttons on the left together with the similar Intelliguard protectors, extra-strength tools handling tough malware, and identical scan choices.
ISO CD Burner:
You will also find some new tools tucked away in the interface. It has made it easy to create bootable recovery media either on an optical disc or on a USB drive. For the first time, the Internet Security from PC Tools of 2011 suite comes with a rescue CD burner, the ISO burner helps to create a bootable security disc that is Linux based to get rid of deep seated malware. So in a worst case scenario even if your PC is under attack, it would be prevented from starting up and you can attempt a recovery by loading this CD onto another Linux system. An excellent touch that we really loved is that, it works with USB drives as well as optical media.
PC Tools Secure Community:
The Spyware Doctor has several layers of real-time guards protecting a clean PC against malware. Additionally there is another layer added by the PC Tools Enhanced Security Permissions of the firewall. By enabling the PC Tools Secure Community feature, the software shares information related to the found malware with the Malware Research Center, helps the product to improve its detection rate and allows other users to receive the latest possible protection.
So, when it comes to detection, the PC Tools manages to detect 89 percent of the threats. Though this seems to be like a pretty good performance, there are others who performed better. Webroot detects 91%, while Panda Internet Security 2010 and Ad-Aware Pro Internet Security 8.3 managed a 94%. It scores high in Malware blocking, however, we would say that the other do a better job.
Intelliguard:
Of the four categories available, the one that you may not be completely familiar is Intelliguard. This is an umbrella terms coined by PC Tools for the protection suite guarding your PC against spyware, worms, zero-day viruses, Trojans, downloading emails that call or trouble and browsing dangerous sites. Likewise it also offers protection against any new viruses, even before the availability of antivirus signatures. Also there is this advanced OnGuard technology that cautions you against Firewall and Virus activity and true Spyware along with filtering your mails for spam. This is remarkable because there should be interruptions by way of cryptic questions each time when you install a software or update your favourites or edit the PC settings.
File and Registry tool:
One of the less useful ones is the File and Registry tool that allows you to edit, view or delete obscure Registry files and keys. We guess not many users would really be in need of such a tool.
Anti-spyware:
The anti-spyware and anti-virus protection of the suite is the most advanced feature that works towards continually improving its Virus fighting and Spyware traits on an everyday basis. PC Tools Internet Security suites software has the distinct advantage of coming from a company that produces a top-of-the-line anti-spyware program, Spyware Doctor. You get to see all of the same anti-spyware traits of that program in this suite too with the same kind of robust effectiveness askin to the Webroot Internet Security Essentials.f With threats getting complex by the day and working towards avoiding detection, the PC Tools Security suite comes back at it with new technologies staying a step ahead. While rest of the Antispam suites handles just POP3 e-mails, PC Tools goes one step ahead in filtering IMAP accounts too. It employs various techniques trying to distinguish spam from genuine mails with real-time blacklists and Bayesian learning being a part of that effort. Additionally, you get an option to remove attachments of specific type of files. There is a handy toolbar in Thunderbird, Windows Live Mail and Outlook that helps with marking messages that are Spam/Not Spam along with managing the names of friends ensuring their mail never gets blocked.
Downloading a thousand email messages takes twice as long with PC Tools filtering spam as with no filter. The average everyday user will not even notice this as a slowdown. PC Tools manages to block 3% of valid mail, which is not a huge amount but enough that you may want to white-list all of your correspondents. By default, it white-lists those in your Outlook Contacts and weirdly blocked 90% bulk mails majority of them from Yahoo Groups.
Anti-virus Protection:
The antivirus of this suite is nothing but a residue of the Spyware Doctor, though it is effective it kind of falls short of competition by way of usability leaving its competitors with a upper hand in this category. Likewise modifying the settings of this feature is also kind of dicey as it shares the same setting area of the antispyware feature. That apart, this is a highly effective program procuring the VB100% award from Virus Bulletin.
Firewall:
Moving on to our least favourite aspect of the package, akin to most internet security software of today, it remains to be the firewall. A 2-way firewall scrutinizes network traffic, detecting hackers and blocking them, preventing intrusion from networks, automatically configuring Internet and network access for known applications and for any application with a valid digital signature and makes decisions to reduce the displaying of alerts. With couple of scareware threats being digitally signed, the last feature can be kind of unreliabe. The quiz the user style has been dropped long back and the modern firewalls do not use confusing queries. For instance, in Norton all known good programs are allowed access and all known programs get destroyed, and it depends on behavioral and statistical detection ensuring unknowns don’t really cause any trouble. Again, Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 moderately sandboxes unknowns such that they don’t cause any harm to a protected PC.
Firewall in action:
The firewall did manage to get through most of the web-based attack and port scan tests, then again isn’t is a must for every firewall out there? As in the case of the 2010 edition, being set to the default settings, it allows probing of ports and getting them open in a remote PC allowing access to potentially huge amounts of useful info with regards to network shares and user accounts. To be fair, if your PC is UAC enabled and sits behind a router, it is not really that easy for a hacker to get this close first of all, then again as the last thread of defense we guess you will feel pleased with a less reliable firewall. When its firewall was challenged with a collection of leak test utilities demonstrating traits of an actual malware trying to evade general program control, various protective layers in PC Tools caught all but one, of the leak tests. While the Enhanced Security Permissions managed to catch some, few others got detected by the firewall itself with the remaining others triggering the Browser Guard warning.
Various layers of the suite also came into the fight when targeted by the exploits triggered by the “Core Impact penetration tool”. A third of the exploits got caught at the browser leveel by the Browser Defender. Yet 20% of the exploits succeeded in dropping a file on the test system, only to be blocked by the real-time protection modules. Though none of the others got a chance to penetrate security, a couple of them managed to crash the browser. Though this looks to be a decent effort, market leaders like Kaspersky and Norton managed to block every single exploit identifying most of them by names. Well any Firewall is not worth it, if some hacker succeeds in turning it off, so we kind of tried various techniques that a malware coder would follow, it did not get disabled with tweaking the Registry. Despite killing some of the processes via the Task Manager, the protection did not come to a halt. However, the protection gets shut easily by disabling and stopping the essential services. Norton, BitDefender, Kaspersky and others seem to perform better when it comes to safeguarding their components from being targeted.
Performance:
In terms of performance, the PC Tools’ new Internet Security Suite 2011 looks to have scored some impressive scores claiming a 100% for detecting and cleansing of WildList malware and a 100% for behavior-based detection. It came out hugely successful with averting commercial keyloggers installation and rootkits more importantly. Similar to Webroot Internet Security Complete 2011, Panda Internet Security 2011and several others, it managed a100 percent detection of rootkits; all of these results based on AVTest.org that is commissioned by PC Tools in August this year. While testing the suite in a system that was previously running AVG Free, the 2011 PC Tools spotted four new threats and 35 infections that the free software had not, however, the risk factor on each of those was low.
When it comes to cookie and tracking cookies it all depends on how the scanning engine has been set up, then again PC Tools’ spyware and adware would be a good choice. The 2010 version of the product ranked just one percent behind the leader of the industry Norton Internet Security, and this September, when pitched against a current selection of malware, the PC Tools Internet Security 2011 achieved an ideal 98% score. It may be no coincidence that the company was acquired by Symantec in 2008.
Support:
In terms of support, the suite proffers a complete knowledgebase, user guides, release info and community forums. For any further info they can be contacted over Live chat, phone or e-mail.
Verdict:
PC Tools’ 2011 suite is a user-friendly and efficient internet security suite that covers all protection aspects, though you get to notice the conventional performance hit that is noticed while it is running. Though the suite looks to be on the right track, we would appreciate something with a more rigorous firewall but at the same time with a lighter footprint. It sure is a relentlessly improving package, but it is not quite there just yet. Honestly, as of now, we find it kind of dicey to recommend it explicitly.
PC Tools Internet Security 2011 – Software Details
| Manufacturer | PC Tools |
| Software | PC Tools Internet Security 2011 |
| Release Date | August 31, 2010 |
| Suite type | Internet Security |
| License type | Complete package |
| License Validation period | 1 Year |
| License quantity | 3 users |
| Package type | Retail |
| OS Compatibility | Microsoft Windows 7 (32bit, 64bit), Windows Vista SP1+ (32bit, 64bit), Windows XP SP2+ (32bit) |
| CPU | 300MHZ(XP) |
| System Memory RAM | 256MB |
| Hard drive | 150MB |
| Supported browsers | Internet Explorer |
| Anti-Virus | Yes |
| Real time protection | Yes |
| Manual protection | Yes |
| FireWall | Yes |
| Anti-Spyware | Yes |
| Anti-Phishing | Yes |
| Anti-Spam | Yes |
| Parental controls | No |
| Data Backup | No |
| Key features | Prevention against: Spyware, Adware, Trojans, Viruses, Worms, Keyloggers, Identity Theft, Hijackers, Tracking Threats, Rogue Anti-Spyware, Unwanted Software, Phishing, Popups, Hackers and Bad Websites. |
| New features | Built on a modular architecture ThreatFire™ Behavioral Intelligence features next-generation technology Advanced rootkit detection technology Multi-layered browsing protection Site Guard Cookie Guard Browser Guard Constant real-time IntelliGuard™ Intelli-Scan™ Automated Firewall Advanced spam filtering State Awareness Modes BETA! Alternate Operating System Scanner (AOSS) |
| Support | Toll-free phone, live chat, email, FAQs, forum |
Leave a Reply