A solid choice for keeping you safe, Avast Internet Security Is best internet security solution in the world.We’ve already dealt with the free edition of Avast, which shows some nifty features yet to be seen even in similar paid products. Although the list of components included in the freebie is not too extensive, besides the basic protection against all kinds of malware, it includes additional protection through the community-based web reputation system and sandboxing of suspicious items.The Internet Security bundle adds to these SafeZone, a virtualized web browsing environment, a firewall capable of taking decisions on its own and spam filtering. The price for the full suite is $49.99.
Installing the application is not much different than what we’ve experienced with the free edition. We still had to choose one of the three installation modes, minimal, typical and custom, with no change in options between the first two; Chrome was still available to be put on the systems without it and a quick check of the machine was still performed.
However, we had to restart the machine for the firewall to be enabled. After Windows, loaded we had to pick one of the three security levels of the firewall by selecting Home (low risk), Work (medium risk), which is also the default, or Public (high risk). Depending on which of these security settings we chose, external connections would be more or less limited. The same user-friendly interface, with components within easy reach, is available in this edition of the product. Menus run down in the left hand part of the application window and there isn’t much configuration to be done, since the program is designed with the average Joe in mind.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that the advanced users do not have access to granular control settings. Almost all security layers come with expert settings, where you get to make the necessary tweaks so that avast! protection fits your needs.
Scan area and the list of real-time shields are absolutely identical with what you get in avast! Free Antivirus. The layers constantly guarding your system make sure that data is scanned as soon as it is accessed; thery check email messages for malware, verifying the web traffic for safe navigation on the Internet, monitor data coming through P2P and instant messaging software. Network traffic is also subject to investigation. Firewall module is in tone with the entire bundle: easy to configure, with options for beginner and advanced users alike. It can function completely automatically, but you can also instruct it to ask what to do when programs with no defined rules are detected.
The configuration of the firewall is very flexible, as it allows you to define different actions (allow, block, ask, auto-decide) to be triggered by new connections according to the current network mode. If you put the firewall on auto-decide, apps from trusted publishers (signature is checked) will be allowed. Other criteria are also used to determine if said program is safe to allow connection or not. For a user working mostly with known programs, the auto-decide option of the firewall will work wonderfully, but those testing new software are likely to bump into false positives.
Defining the application rules in avast! Internet Security is quite an easy job, fit even for beginners. Simply drag by a slider to permit or limit inbound / outbound connections. You also get to specify the ports that can be used.
A special section of the Firewall module is Network Utilities. This menu comprises tools that can help you retrieve details about a given IP address or to check the route a network packet takes to reach destination.
Our tests with the firewall showed that it is not the strongest on the market, but it can stand mild attacks. However, during our evaluation, it failed to fend off more elaborated types of assault, such as DLL injection.
As far as anti-spam filtering is concerned, the application automatically detects the type of connection used to send the messages and interposes between the email server and the email client. By doing this, it will actually take over the security of the connection (SSL/TLs). Because of this, you have to disable the encryption in the email client; otherwise scanning the messages is no longer possible.
There is no major tweaking to be made. Your choices are limited to providing the message that marks spam in the subject line, and creating the lists of approved email addresses and domain names. Also, you will have to create a rule in your email client to direct marked spam to a folder of your choice. Accuracy improvement does not depend on the user, but the anti-spam rules provided by avast!.
System slowdowns shouldn’t be a serious issue with the Avast suite, though overall it wound up near the middle of the pack in that respect. It added barely any time to file downloads as compared to our test system without antivirus software installed. Its scan speeds were faster than the average of the products we tested: It completed our on-demand scan test (in which we scan 4.5GB of data using the manual scanner) in 1 minute, 21 seconds--one of the fastest performances we saw this year--and its on-access scanner (which runs when the user opens or saves a file) completed its check of 4.5GB in 4 minutes, 1 second, a slightly better time than average.
Verdict:-Internet Security from AVAST Software comes with an incredible interface layout that is easy to adopt by beginners, yet offers advanced users the granular control settings they need. Scan speed and low resource usage make of it one of the lightest security suites on the market.
Properly configured, the firewall can handle the connections on its own, depending on the network type you choose.
Thanks to virtualization components, you can run any program in an environment isolated from the real operating system; secure web browsing is also done in a virtual environment that can be reset to its default state at a click of a button.
Giveaway:
Contest Is Closed....winners List can be Found Here
Thanks to AVAST we are giving away 10(TEN) license keys of Avast Internet Security to readers of Allforsoftwarenews. Thanks to Julia Szymanska and Kristyna Mazankova and whole avast team for helping us.
Contest Is Closed....winners List can be Found Here
