F-Secure Internet Security 2005: New Competition for Norton and McAfee Remember the Good Ol' Days? Joseph Moran
Remember the good old days when anti-virus software alone was all you needed to protect your PC? Well those days went away with Y2K and the continued evolution of the Internet (with the good inevitably comes some bad), which means the best – and only completely effective – way to guard against all the potential Net-borne nasties is with a full suite of security software. The latest such suite is F-Secure Internet Security 2005, which offers firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, spam filtering, and parental control capabilities from one centralized interface.
Upon installation, F-Secure Internet Security 2005 (FSIS 2005) presents a rather Spartan-looking but well-designed wizard to configure basic settings such as identifying the browser and e-mail client used, enabling application control and parental control (along with a password for the latter), and determining a schedule for virus scanning.
F-Secure unfortunately does not offer a proper manual – even in electronic format – for Internet Security 2005. The application does provide context-sensitive online help, but it's not well organized and supplies little detail on the various configuration options — only brief descriptions of each.
Ironically, each time the browser-based help module is accessed, it's flagged as potentially dangerous active content by Windows XP SP2 and won't launch unless manually overridden each time the help system is started. F-Secure's firewall and anti-virus components, on the other hand, do play nicely with SP2's integrated Security Center.
Anti-Virus and Spyware Removal
Unlike some security suites, FSIS 2005 doesn't include a discrete spyware-removal component, but instead builds it directly into the anti-virus software. According to F-Secure officials, the underlying spyware identification technology is based on Lavasoft's well-regarded (and free) Ad Aware product.
Internet Security 2005's Anti-Virus component can perform real-time, manual, and scheduled scanning, and lets you define one of three levels of protection — off, normal, and high. You can also choose a custom setting to fine tune individual settings, like whether you want compressed files included in scans. F-Secure's anti-virus component also displays a news area to keep you apprised of current or recent virus outbreaks and to let you know whether you're protected from the relevant threats.
When we performed a virus scan on our system, FSIS 2005 identified a dozen infected or unauthorized files. Strangely, though, files that could not be cleaned were summarily renamed, and no option was given to delete the files. On the plus side, the reports do include links to the F-Secure site with descriptions on the infections.
Firewall
FSIS 2005's Internet Shield component encompasses several major protective features of the product. You can choose from five global settings for the Internet Shield — allow all, block all, normal, high, or custom if you want to tweak individual settings to your own liking.
The F-Secure firewall includes an intrusion detection feature that can block (or simply log) a number of common attacks during our testing. No holes showed up in the firewall after subjecting it to a number of scanning tests.
The useful application control feature monitors applications that attempt to access the Internet and gives you the opportunity to block unauthorized or questionable applications. Also included but not enabled by default is the ability to prevent applications from launching or modifying other applications.
Dial-up users will appreciate the dial-up control feature that prevents Trojan software from jacking up your phone bill by dialing unauthorized (and usually offshore) numbers.
