Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, a powerful contender for the security crown

Tuesday September 08, 2009

Written by Darien Graham-Smith

Tags: kaspersky | internet | security | 2010 | software

$100

Price at time of review.

A powerful and capable suite with some excellent features, although it isn’t the easiest to use, nor the cheapest around.

Kaspersky

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 may have arrived early, but a number of improvements show it isn't a rushed release.

The interface has received an overhaul, with large, clear tabs and more white space than before. But behind the clean design a plethora of sub-panes means it isn't always simple to get where you want to go.

There are some technical updates too. The browser toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox now includes a button to launch a screen keyboard, used to defeat keyloggers. Safe Run lets you run programs you're uncertain about in a sandboxed environment where they can't access your system files.

And Kaspersky also makes smarter use of online resources: bad files can be instantly blacklisted from a central database, while whitelisted files don't need to be fully scanned, saving time. Other additions include improved rootkit detection, IM monitoring and web advert suppression.

Thankfully, these extras don't make Kaspersky a bloated suite. In tests, it added six seconds to boot time, and the RAM footprint rose from 528MB to just 611MB.

The firewall remains one of our favourites: as soon as we tried to probe the system, Kaspersky blocked our attacking PC. But, sadly, when it came to intercepting malware it wasn't as impressive, with a detection rate of 88% falling behind the 90% achieved by G Data and Avira.

Several of these samples weren't identified by name, but were flagged because of their potential behaviour. And although we'd like to see evidence of a more comprehensive database, such behaviour detection demonstrates that Kaspersky can intercept threats it hasn't seen before.

If Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 had detected just a few more samples, and if it were just a little cheaper, we could have been looking at a new A List winner here. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite take the crown in those areas, but it remains a credible and powerful suite that's well worth a look.

Rating

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Featured Retailer

Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, Safe Mode Runable, Single Users, Retail Version, 2 Year License

Price: $62.50
Availability: Yes

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This article appeared in the October, 2009 issue of PC Authority.

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Comments: 4

Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.

seeknowevil Sep 8, 2009 1:06 PM	I don't know where you are getting the price from but scorptec currently have the retail version for $89 and it is 3 user and 2 years registraion. Comment made about the PC Authority article: Kaspersky Internet Security 2010, a powerful contender for the security crown? A powerful and capable suite with some excellent features, although it isn’t the easiest to use, nor the cheapest around. What do you think? Join the discussion.
davidk Sep 12, 2009 11:50 AM	I was impressed with the review of KIS in PC Authority a year ago and bought KIS - largely because I got pissed off with the sluggard performance of Norton. Over a year I was reasonably impressed with KIS2009, so I upgraded to 2010 when it came due. As it turns out, my mistake . . . The 2010 UI is much better. But it isn't an option to simply renew 2009, you have to uninstall it and then install 2010. In so doing, it tells you that non-windows applications will be scanned the first time they are opened, and that's the issue. I am finding that it takes from 2 to 6 minutes to scan them the first time, and that's on a dual core AMD Athlon 64 5600+ machine with 2Gb RAM. It looks like the the PC has stalled - the only thing that works is the mouse pointer. Even cntrl-Alt-del is dead. It is incredibly frustrating. If you can wait it out, things do improve (time varies with the application - if its a package like Office or nero with lots of managed items, the time lag is really long) but the time lag is terrible, and at the end it's much better to quit and start again rather than continue. Once past this barrier the application start performance seems "normal". On a 2nd single core machine covered by the same license, a 2.7Ghz celeron with 1Gb RAM, the user is really really pissed off with the slaggy application start since the upgrade. None of this happened in the 2009 version on the same machines, and the post installation whole of system scans have not revealed any unplanned tenants.. I've complained to Kapersky, they've provided a tool to analyse with and reported no machine problems found, and claim no one else has this problem. Possibly because they haven't complained. But they can't have it both ways - unusual and unexpected performance on application upgrade, a tool they supplied which showed no machine issues and then not appreciate that the application is the problem. But it seems that they are impervious to the suggestion that the new application is the cause. So my advice is, don't buy it. I'm looking for something else right now . . . .
MikeyB Sep 12, 2009 2:31 PM	What's the point of a screen keyboard? If I could not trust my own system, I wouldn't even log on to a financial web site. I would either reinstall Windows or use a Linux live CD or something. Screen keyboards only defeat hardware keyloggers anyway, any competent software keylogger will see the actual characters you typed.
Tina81 Feb 10, 2010 6:14 PM	Hi, have found some interesting page on the Kaspersky and also many other virus scanners are compared and tested! http://www.antivirus-review.org/internet-security/kaspersky-internet-security.html