Panda Internet Security 2016 Review - Doesn't Live Up to Expectations

fair
key review info
application features
  • New UI blends with Windows 10
  • (5 more, see all...)

Panda Internet Security 2016 is a feature-rich anti-malware application that includes a real-time safeguard against incoming threats, multiple scan modes, a quarantine manager, and a lot of extra components made to facilitate total computer protection.

It offers support for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices. Internet Security is part of a lineup for AV solutions from developer Panda Security, where each tool comes bundled with more features than the last.

Differences between the four Panda editions

On Windows systems, Panda Free Antivirus 2016 ensures computer protection against all types of malware. It contains a USB protection module, a monitor for active processes, and a rescue kit component for creating bootable USB drives. It's free to use.

Panda Antivirus Pro 2016 adds a virtual keyboard to keep your credentials safe from keyloggers and other hijackers, anti-phishing for blocking fraudulent websites, wireless network protection to block intruders, firewall, and application control. It's now available at $32.99 / €32.99, temporarily discounted from $43.99 / €32.99, excluding VAT.

Panda Internet Security 2016 also has a parental control feature to block inappropriate content, along with online backup via Mozy (requires account, not free). It's now available at $38.49 / €38.49, temporarily discounted from $54.99 / €54.99, excluding VAT.

Panda Global Protection 2016 has all of the above plus a PC tuneup utility that removes junk files from the system and Internet Explorer, a startup manager, an anti-theft component that locates lost or stolen devices via a Panda account, a password manager and data shredder, along with 20GB cloud drive provided by Panda and backups for your contacts (Gold members only). It's now available at $46.19 / €46.19, temporarily discounted from $76.99 / €76.99, excluding VAT.

New interface with Start menu

The 2016 version of Panda Internet Security gets a new look that blends well with the Windows 10 appearance. The main application window has a white background and different shades of blue for the tiles. You can enter customization mode to be able to remove most of these tiles, change their order via drag-and-drop, or add new ones. Similar to Windows, the tool lists all features in a Start menu.

The new look of Panda Internet Security 2016 blends well with Windows 10
The new look of Panda Internet Security 2016 blends well with Windows 10

Scanner and scan settings

In the main window, you can check out total scanned files, items in the quarantine, and blocked threats. There are three scan modes available: full mode for all hard disks, quick mode for critical areas, and custom mode. Any of them can be scheduled to run daily, weekly or monthly.

During the scanner, you can pause the job or schedule the PC to shut down on task completion. On threat detection, Panda either sends the items to the quarantine or removes them from the HDD. In the quarantine, you can find out the item's original location and look up descriptions of threats on the developer's website, in order to decide whether you want to permanently remove the files or restore them to the disk.

When it comes to the real-time guard settings (i.e. permanent protection), you can disable it, exclude compressed files from scans, turn off behavioral blocking and analysis, set the tool to ask for confirmation before neutralizing a virus, deactivate PUPs detection, hide warnings on threat detection, or specify the number of seconds during which suspicious files are blocked until confirmation is retrieved from the Panda cloud.

For on-demand scans, it's possible to include archives in scan jobs, turn off PUPs detection, and ask the program to scan after cache synchronization. Plus, you can empty the quarantine automatically (every three days, week or month), exclude any files, folders or file extensions, as well as delete files restored from the quarantine (these are auto-excluded from future scans if you restore them to the disk).

Firewall with program control and intrusion prevention

The Panda firewall protects the computer from network-based intrusions (such as UDP floods), blocks processes, and monitors connections and shared resources between your PC and others in LAN. It can be configured for home, work or public places, and it handles events silently, without displaying any notifications.

It has a list of predefined processes that it filters inbound and outbound connections for, in addition to another list of rules recommended by the developers (e.g. deny inbound connections for NetBIOS over public networks and for Remote Desktop).

However, you can edit these properties, remove the entries from the list, or add new ones by filling out some information: display name, programs, action (allow or deny inbound or outbound connections), protocol (TCP, UDP or both), remote ports, and addresses (IP, MAC or all). Rules can be exported to file to import them later.

As far as intrusion prevention is concerned, you can either stick to the default configuration or disable some features: IP explicit path, land attack, SYN flood, TCP port scan and flag check, IP and TCP header length check, UDP flood and port scan, Smart ARP, OS detection, ICMP Drop unsolicited responses, Small PMTU, Smurf, fragmentation control. The ones you can enable are Smart DNS and DHCP, and ICMP no echo requests.

Process monitor and USB protection

The process monitor shows the processes of currently running applications, along with the total executed processes, those accessing the Internet, blocked ones, and those of medium or high threat level. You can find out their classification level (secure or insecure), number of HTTP connections established, and date of discovery.

The USB protection component monitors your machine's USB ports, identifies all new devices, and prevents them from running the autoplay feature, which is a popular virus infection method (like the Conficker worm). It works not only for USB removable drives but also for CDs and DVDs. Panda shows a systray notification on new device detection and offers to scan it.

Furthermore, it can permanently disable the autorun.inf file on the removable device (i.e. vaccination), thus preventing it from being read, deleted or modified, in order to block any possible infections on the computer via autoplay (this is an irreversible operation). Panda can auto-perform this action for every USB drive inserted in the PC. Plus, you can disable scan suggestions or disable the whole USB protection module.

Wi-Fi protection and rescue kit

The Wi-Fi protection feature oversees your Internet connections and lists all remote devices connected to the same network as you. This way, you can find out if unauthorized users have decrypted your wireless password and are connected to your network. It also shows which devices are linked to which network.

It's possible to find out the remote device's IP and MAC address, manufacturer and timestamp, in addition to the router address, encryption type, authentication mode, and signal. You can disable notifications when connecting to networks with security issues, ask the program to report only networks with low security, exclude any networks from notifications, or deny PC access to any linked device.

The rescue kit is capable of creating a rescue USB drive that can be used to boot infected computers. It can also download, install and run Panda Cloud Cleaner to find and remove malware.

Parental control

The parental control module enables parents, teachers and employees to set restrictions to others using the current computer when surfing the web. Only administrators have access to this feature, and they can configure settings for the current administrative account or other PC users.

Panda has a few predefined filters in this regard and gives you the possibility of browsing a long list of content types to deny access to: advertisements and popups, alcohol and tobacco, anonymizers, chat, forums and newsgroups, criminal activity, and so on. Moreover, you can deny access to all webpages classified as unknown (which are not part of the list), as well as create two lists of addresses and domains to always allow and deny access to.

Panda Internet Security 2016: View parental control statistics
Panda Internet Security 2016: View parental control statistics

The effects are immediately applied to all your web browsers, and Panda shows a notification with the blocked page and reason. Since this module is only applicable to the current computer, don't forget to set a password to the Panda Internet Security console if you're setting restrictions to the administrative account.

In the console, you can check out various statistics collected by the application, namely the most visited websites and categories, along with the denied websites and categories. This information can be filtered for each PC user and for the current day, week or month.

Data shield and application control

Data shield is a security feature that protects specific data from programs attempting to access it, and lets you manage permissions for specific applications. It defends the Documents folder along with Office documents, images, audio and video files by default. However, you can remove folders from the list and add custom ones, as well as edit the file extensions identified by each group or create new groups with custom file formats to protect.

Likewise, you can remove the default programs from the list, change their permission, or add new ones by indicating their launch file and permission: allow or deny access when attempting to access the protected data. It shows a systray message every time an unknown program (any unlisted app) tries to access the protected folders and asks you what to do.

Information about last access attempts can be inspected in the AV console, namely the name, full path, date and time for each blocked process. You can forbid access to safe applications anytime, or instruct Panda to deny access to all unknown programs without user confirmation.

The application control component may look the same as the previously described programs list. The difference is that, in the data shield, you can set permissions to processes only when they try to access the protected folders you indicate, while application control enables you to allow or deny access to programs when they try to run. Just like before, Panda automatically blocks tools with "deny" permission and shows a systray notification every time an unknown program attempts to run, asking you what to do.

Safe browsing, virtual keyboard, and general settings

The safe browsing module keeps track of URLs you're trying to access on your web browsers and notifies you of reported phishing websites designed to steal your credentials. The AV console shows the recorded URLs, reason and date, total blocked links, malware, phishing and fraud, along with URLs allowed by the user. As far as settings are concerned, you can create a list with allowed addresses and domains.

The virtual keyboard enables you to securely type email accounts, user names and passwords on social networking or banking websites, for example, in case anyone installed a keylogger on your computer.

As far as general settings go, you can log in with your Panda account, set a password for accessing the AV console, check for updates (these are performed automatically), disable notifications when playing a game or working with another app in full screen, change proxy settings, generate an advanced report, and hide the Panda news notification.

All important events, such as scan, firewall, wireless network and data shield activity, are recorded to reports, which can be printed or exported to file.

Testing the malware detection ratio and scan speed

We tested Panda's malware detection ratio and scan time on an Intel Core i5-4570S CPU @ 2.90hz with 8GB RAM and 111GB SSD Kingston SV300S37A120G, running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. The target was a 2.36GB folder filled with 8,502 infected files.

Unfortunately, the real-time guard was completely unresponsive during our tests. It didn't react when we extracted the files from the password-protected archive, opening their folder, selecting them, or running them.

We asked Panda to run a custom scan with default settings on the 2.36GB folder. The task took the mind-bending time of 8 hours to finish, after which the AV identified and quarantined 6,293 files, leaving behind 2,209 files. We ran three more scans after this, and Panda found and quarantined a few more files with each scan. In the end, it left behind 1,969 items, which means that, overall, it had a malware detection ratio of roughly 77%. CPU and RAM consumption was barely noticeable during this time.

In the following stage our of evaluation, we retested the scan time. A critical area scan on the 111GB SSD took 4 minutes, while a custom scan on the Windows directory (23.6GB) took 20 minutes. 


The Good

It's available for Windows, Mac, Android and iOS devices. The interface blends well with the Windows 10 look and its options are easy to find. Any module can be disabled and tiles can be removed from the console.

The parental control and firewall components worked smoothly in our tests. The data shield immediately reacted when unknown programs tried to access the protected folders.

It has a comprehensive help manual that explains most parts of the program.

The Bad

As previously mentioned, Panda shows a notification message for the data shield module whenever an unknown application tries to access the protected directories, and it asks you what to do: allow or deny. However, although it doesn't inform you of this, it remembers the choice you make for that process, adds it to the permissions list, and sets its permission type. This means that it will automatically allow or deny access to that program whenever it tries to access the protected folders, until you go to the console panel to revert settings. In other words, Panda doesn't implement two options in the tray message for allowing / denying access only once and always.

The application control module worked well in our tests when denying access to programs that were on the list. However, it didn't prompt us for action whenever an unknown application tried to run, and it didn't deny access when we asked it to do this automatically, except in one case: when we tried opening Panda's virtual keyboard. Plus, just like in the case of the data shield, Panda doesn't have two options for allowing / denying access only once and always.

The safe browsing component missed a few phishing websites in our tests.

It took 8 hours to scan a 2.36GB folder with infected files in our tests (the scanner was a lot faster on different parts of the computer afterward). It had a malware detection ratio of roughly 77%.

While the real-time guard was enabled and Panda was idle, other running applications had a slower response time on Windows 10 and Windows 7.

On a minor note, it's not possible to create, edit or delete categories in parental control.

The Truth

Panda Internet Security was difficult for us to test due to the previously described issues. It seems like the developers focused so much on the new look and extra security features that they lost track of Panda Internet Security's main mission: speedy and effective anti-malware protection. We can only hope that the software program gets better in future revisions.

However, you don't have to take our word for it. You can download and test Panda Internet Security 2016 for yourself (the first 30 days are free). Before doing so, make sure to check out our gallery with screenshots with the UI and tests!

NOTE: You can also check out our previous Panda Internet Security 2013 review.

user interface 5
features 2
ease of use 4
pricing / value 2


final rating 2
Editor's review
fair
 
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Panda Internet Security 2016 screenshots (26 Images)

The new look of Panda Internet Security 2016 blends well with Windows 10Panda Internet Security 2016: Customize the tilesPanda Internet Security 2016: Open the Start menuPanda Internet Security 2016: Run three scan typesPanda Internet Security 2016: View scan statistics
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