14 DAY TRIAL // Antivirus Protection
As fall comes, the season for security suites breaks loose. The reason is that those Christmas computer systems need some sort of protection and antivirus companies struggle to come up with the best solution of protecting a home user computer and thus gain a spot on the different configurations available.
Panda makes no exception and released its Internet Security solution for the next year. Panda Internet Security 2008 comes with a bunch of changes, but the best of them is absolutely invisible to the user. However, your computer will feel it. It is called MegaDetection and it is a new technology for on-demand scanning.
Internet Security 2008 brings a number of features designed to protect your data all-around. It offers security against viruses, spyware, phishing attacks, provides identity protection and anti-spam component as well as a backup utility and parental control. What you do not see is the additional technology injected in the application: TruePrevent (heuristics) and TotalScan Pro (newest online antivirus from Panda).
All these specifications sound good for the uninitiated and even the price sounds good (49.95 euro for 6 months' services) considering the list of features included in the package. And don't forget about the free test month available for trying out the software.
Keep in mind that immediately after install process is over you will have to reboot your computer for all the modifications to enter into force. Also, there may be some problems with your browser connecting to the Internet after installation, but only if you switched to Panda's firewall during installation.
During our testing Panda Internet Security 2008 cut off the Internet connection of our web browser but this was soon remedied after a brief modification into firewall settings (our browser was not recognized by the application and was not allowed the connection).
The interface is straightforward and the moment you launch the application you will dive right in the middle of options and settings. At a first glance it does not appear too much to configure and attend to, but a keener look will soon discover the myriad of alternative settings that can be used to adjust the behavior of Panda IS 2008 just the way you want it.
Under Status screen the application will display its state in four different expandable panes. The first on the list is Security Protection and is by far the most important feature of the suite. Other menus available are Unwanted Content Filters (anti-spam protection) and system optimization and backup.
Security Protection expandable menu contains options for enabling regular protection against known threats as well as heuristics for deflecting unknown threats. Besides these Security Protection menu provides configuration settings for firewall (extremely easy to use), enable Internet protection level control, anti-fraud protection and against vulnerabilities that may be on your computer.
Each of these different protections can be enabled one by one, but if one of them is disabled Panda IS 2008 will display an "Attention" warning in red color. Unfortunately during our testing the red colored warning was a constant as at each restart of the software it would not remember the settings and disable all types of protection.
Configuring the application is piece of cake as Preferences menu available in the upper part of the window is highly visible and its options are easy to understand and handle. General tab contains Self-Diagnosis enabling (it checks that the software is correctly protecting your computer), reduce CPU load during computer scan, enable scanning of removable drives on start (Panda IS 2008 will scan boot sectors of removable drives) and allow information to be sent to Panda (send anonymous information about detected attacks and viruses).
Panda IS 2008 can check out your incoming and outgoing email messages and their attachment for eventual nasties. Automatic mail protection settings are limited to your Outlook or Outlook Express accounts and you can specify the profile to be monitored by the application in Preferences menu.
If Internet connection is achieved via a proxy server, Preferences menu is the place to specify all the necessary details (IP address, port, username and password).
Protecting all the settings you make in Panda IS 2008 is piece of cake. The application has pervasive options that include securing your settings as well. Thus you can prevent access to certain sections of the software: automatic updates and subscription, protection against known and unknown threats, firewall protection settings, Internet protection level, anti-fraud settings, anti-spam protection and Web content control. Actually you can lock the access to all important settings of the software.
Just like most protection software, Panda will display its warnings in pop ups. However, too many of them may become intrusive to the user. That is why Panda Internet Security 2008 allows the user to configure which non-critical messages shall be displayed. The list is available in the last tab of Preferences menu an includes warnings for blocked intrusion attempts, vulnerabilities, malicious cookies, unknown viruses, self-diagnosis, informative warnings, detection of viruses and other threats, etc.
If you want to know about everything Panda Internet Security 2008 has to say to you while working but still hate the intrusion of those pop ups, you can configure their transparency and duration of time to be displayed. A more elaborate solution like being able to configure each warning message for transparency and duration of the display would have fitted perfectly, but this will have to do.
Once all these preferences are done according to your wishes you can proceed to configuring the way Panda deals with protecting your computer against all sorts of threats, from viruses and spyware to unauthorized access via the ports of your system and fraud.
Users can select the items to be scanned against known threats and make the necessary settings for each of them. The four items Panda Internet Security can scan are the files stored on your disk, email boxes, data received via instant messaging software and Internet browsing.
More than this, in the lower part of the screen the user can access a menu that gives control over the types of threats the application should look for: viruses are checked by default and you cannot disable this box, but you can prevent the program from detecting spyware programs, hacking tools, dialers and jokes.
Advanced Settings of this section permits enabling the protection of Internet Explorer settings, should there be any attempt to change them without your consent. Panda can ask you what actions to be taken or can restrict the modifications of Internet Explorer settings (start page, search page, navigation failure, etc.). As a measure of precaution you can save all these settings for restoring them later, should something happen.
The items Panda is empowered to scan support configuration of their own with regard to file types, exclusions, actions to be taken and warnings to display. Thus, for the files stored on the hard drive Panda can be enabled to search in compressed files, user defined extensions (or all of them) and enable the creation of a report.
When looking into your email for malware the program can scan both inbound and outbound messages, as well as compressed attachments. Users can define a set of extensions to be checked out or enable an "all extensions" scan. With instant messaging scan things are pretty much the same as you can enable the scan of compressed files and all file types that are being sent to you.
Heuristics detection (detection of unknown threats - viruses, worms, spyware, etc.) via TruPrevent technology is also configurable and its results are obtained through a behavioral analysis that supervises the execution of all processes in order to detect and block malware. The settings for this section refer to Genetic Heuristic Scan of files, emails, instant messaging applications and web browsing. All the settings available for these items are limited to selecting a higher or lower sensitivity level.
The two levels available are High and Normal. I have to warn you that with High level activated the chances for Panda to pinpoint false positives are much increased. However, this type of protection is suitable for scanning files received via email or instant messengers.
Given the abundant technology (MegaDetection and TruPrevent) injected into the application in order to detect and, equally important, eliminate the threats we have subjected Panda Internet Security 2008 to some tests of our own.
With our basic malware sample collection Panda recorded a score of 86% in detecting and eliminating our threats. It could have been better, but this result is not too shabby either. Making it face a tougher crowd of malware Panda Internet Security 2008 dropped its detection and elimination rate to 63% with 28 eliminated items and for another 40 of them I received an infection notification, out of 93 samples. Both collections contained a wide range of malware varying from viruses, worms, trojans, exploits and backdoors to email flooders, rootkits, spoofers and sniffers.
Although at the second test the detection and elimination ratio of the application registered a serious drop it provides the user the complete path to the infected file and you can delete it manually. Unfortunately there is no option for Panda to take you to the file or open the folder containing the file automatically.
Speaking of computer scanning for malware, you have to know that Panda Internet Security 2008 permits the user to perform this activity from a clean environment. This is achieved by creating a bootable Safe CD. The utility of this feature consists in the fact that sometimes a virus can make it impossible to start your computer. In this case the SafeCD can perform a scan of the computer with absolutely no problem. If you follow the on-screen instructions after booting from the Safe Disk there will be absolutely no problem.
But, there is one downside: you cannot disinfect or delete detected infections, at least not on NTFS formatted drives. This is a huge disadvantage that leaves you with only viewing the location of the infected file.
Although the antivirus did not put up too good of a fight in our second test, a home user will be content by the efficiency of the detection and elimination.
The Good
Panda Internet Security 2008 offers around the clock protection of your computer against all sorts of threats, both known and unknown.
You can scan both single locations as well as emails, instant messaging received files, Internet browsing and the entire disks. Users can specify which threats should be excluded from the scan.
Internet Explorer settings are protected and as a security measure you can save all the values to a file and load them up if IE settings get corrupted.
Heuristic scan can be enabled for all file types targeted by the program and the user can select the desired protection level.
The Bad
Though the general conclusion on scanning is good, the application could use some improvements in malware elimination process.
Safe Disk (scanning from a free environment) is a great instrument but it has a huge flaw: it cannot delete detected malware. All it can do is show them to you and their location.
Scan window does not offer any options except viewing the report of the process. There is no context menu and all notifications regarding malware infection have to be dealt with manually. I wish there was an option to open the folder containing infected file or a link to a tool that removes the infection safely from user's computer.
The interface is the last thing on the list, but it could use some retouching, especially secondary windows.
The Truth
All in all antivirus properties of the software are good but still do not compare with the abilities of other similar applications on the market. There is still enough room for improvement and it seems that the first steps in this sense have been taken. It still has some difficulties with removing all detected malware and Safe Disk feature is indeed an asset (which can be improved by allowing deletion of detected malware on NTFS formatted drives).
Go to the second part of the review
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
