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McAfee Internet Security 2009
The latest version from McAfee is easy to use, comprehensive and comes with an integrated site advisor to protect you from unsafe websites
Piyush Dhingra
Monday, December 01, 2008
The latest version of McAfee comes with a host of new features including
quick scan, alerts and easy set-up. Features included in the suite are
protection against anti-virus/anti-spyware, and anti-phishing; firewall
protection, identity protection and website advisor which warns the user with
color coded ratings about unsafe websites.
McAfee SecurityCenter has an easy to understand user interface. An
interesting feature is the SystemGuard, which basically monitors, logs and
manages changes made to the system registry or critical files. Changes that are
not common and indicate any potential threat are immediately reported and
logged. The stealth mode blocks all incoming network connections thereby making
the system invisible to internet intruders. The parental control feature allows
the user to set browsing time limits, filters inappropriate images and restrict
access to specific websites. This feature also provides a password vault where a
user can securely maintain a list of all the passwords. This list is also
password protected, so the user has to remember only one password instead of
many. Another welcome change in the software is that it does not interrupt the
user with alerts, updates, etc when the user is busy watching a movie or playing
games in full-screen mode. This software also provides a option to back up and
restore files. To run this feature the system should have .NET framework 1.1 as
it runs in its own environment.
Price: Rs. 2,699
Meant for: Desktop & laptop users
Key specs: Anti-virus, firewall, anti-spam, anti-phishing
Pros: User friendly, unsafe website detection
Cons: System resources usage is a bit high
Vendor: McAfee, Mumbai
Contact: 40291300
Web: www.mcafee.com
SMS McAfee to 56677 |
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A user can back up files to a CD, DVD, USB drive, external hard drive or
network drive. The interface is easy to use and provides the user with a variety
of options. The user can set the location of files and also the type of files to
be looked for. Once the location and types are defined, the backup takes place
at regular intervals. These intervals are customizable according to user needs
and can be done on demand as well. A user can back up data in two ways -quick
and full. In full mode, a complete back up of the defined files is taken, while
in quick mode the backup of those files to which changes are made is taken.
McAfee provides back up of data by compressing it to reduce disk space usage
and also by encrypting it to prevent its theft. This feature can be disabled if
required.
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Tests and results
We installed the software on a Windows XP machine. For anti-virus testing we
scanned our virus database and it was able to detect almost all viruses and
clean/quarantine them. For checking the firewall capabilities we ran DoS attacks
through backtrack. The software was able to block the attacks but it did not
raise any alarms nor anything was mentioned in the log records. We also checked
the anti-phishing capabilities by visiting a few phishing sites and software was
able to detect and raise a warning. We checked the software for e-mail scans and
it was not able to detect zipped viruses but when tried to extract the same, it
did raise an alarm. The software needs to improve upon the zipped virus
detection. The Avg. CPU consumption during scan was 60% which is on the higher
side as compared to Norton's latest release which we reviewed in our last issue.
Also the average RAM consumption during scans was quite high at 76% whereas
Norton's new release only consumed 39% of the RAM during scans.
Bottomline: It is an easy-to-use produ ct but
its system resource consumption is a bit high.
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