Trend Micro's Internet Security Pro 2009, launched in October, can be used on up to three desktop systems to protect against a variety of malware and security threats.
The original basis of the package was the old PC-cillin anti-virus scanner but, as with all desktop security packages, extra features have been added as the threat landscape has changed.
Support is limited to desktop Windows systems, 32/64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate, Vista Business, Home Premium and Home Basic (all with Service Pack 1), Windows XP (32-bit) Home/Professional Edition (with Service Pack 2) and Windows XP Media Center/Tablet PC 2005 Editions (with Service Pack 2).
The main security features in the package are anti-virus and anti-spyware functions, personal firewall, spam email filter, parental controls, data theft prevention, and phishing/pharming protection.
The Pro version also has an activity dashboard giving a summary of the security threats found, and access to the logs created when Pro 2009 has performed a scan. There's also a password-protected vault for storing confidential documents in case the computer is lost or stolen.
Another extra feature is a system tuner which checks hard disks for recoverable space, finds unused entries in the system registry, checks programs that load up automatically when the system starts, and lists tracking cookies and web site addresses found in the browser.
The other two extra features are the ability to protect selected mobile phones by installing an agent on the handset, and a toolbar which can be installed on your browser that rates web site safety and can be used to check the reputation of any available wireless networks, perform keystroke encryption and rate instant messaging and webmail security risks.
We installed the package on three systems, the first being a Sony Vaio VGN-BZ11MN notebook which had an Intel Core 2 Duo P4800 2.26GHz processor with 2Gb of 800MHz system memory running under Vista Business.
A full system scan on this system took 66 minutes and checked 223497 'targets', although users should flush the internet cache, defrag the hard drive and remove any temporary files before running anti-virus scans. Checking a separate Windows 7 partition gave a time of 15 minutes to check 99,500 targets.
Installation on all three systems took around 10 minutes, after which we updated the package with the latest threat signatures and ran full scans on all systems. On the Sony notebook, Pro 2009 picked up the fact that we hadn't applied patches to the Office Professional 2007 suite we had installed, but nothing else apart from several cookies.
Although support is limited to desktop Windows systems, users can check system drives on shut down server operating systems by sharing the root system drive and pointing the scan at that drive.
We also installed Pro 2009 on a dual-boot test server running Windows XP on one partition and Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition on another partition. We knew the server to be infected with malware, and Pro 2009 picked it up and quarantined it correctly.
We could look through the security logs produced when Pro 2009 performed a scan to see details on the malware, but it seems that a log was produced only when malware was actually found. We would prefer to see timestamps corresponding to when the scan started and finished, as well as how many system memory items and files were checked.
One really irritating feature on some anti-malware packages is that the feature window cannot be expanded to full size, and this is the case with Pro 2009. The user interface, as with most security packages, needs to be investigated fully to make sure there are no default options which could actually decrease the security of your system.
We found one of these in the custom scan settings under the 'What kinds of files do you want to scan?' option. The default option is set to 'Only files likely to pose a risk', but users should really be setting this to 'All kinds of files', unless they're sure that someone out there is not working on hiding malware in 'files not likely to pose a risk'.
The firewall can be customised up to a point, but users cannot block specific ports and protocols, although whether this level of usability should be provided in security packages of this type is a moot point.
The system can be password-protected against unauthorised changes to the settings. It was also easy to log on to the TrendSecure web site and manage which systems we wanted to protect with Pro 2009, so if users replace a computer it's easy to install Pro 2009 on the new one and deactivate the licence on the older system.
Overall Pro 2009 is an impressive package, but with several niggles. One problem with evaluating these packages is that there are very few independent facilities that can fully test anti-malware products. One such facility is AV-Test.org, whose most recent test results indicate that Pro 2009 does not offer better protection than competing systems.
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