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The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)

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40hz:
I don't know the validity of these comments, but they might be worth looking at before buying.
-longrun (February 13, 2014, 02:01 PM)
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I'm looking at 4 personal (3 laptops + one desktop) machines and well over 100 client PCs that I'm directly responsible for. Haven't run into anything even remotely like that, so I'm not sure what I should be looking at. All is calm - all is bright. Same goes for their server AV products. Have never run into a single problem. But I also knew each of those machines was properly set-up and updated -  and was "squeaky clean" system-wise before I installed BitDefender so somebody else's mileage could well vary.
 8)

Innuendo:
Neil actually did go review Outpost after this initial roundup, here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2430088,00.asp
-mouser (February 13, 2014, 09:45 AM)
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Neil's verdict is grossly different than everything else I have ever read about this product, especially the firewall. Agnitum's firewall is one of the best in the business as rated by independent tests.

Agnitum's new AV engine is starting to get a lot of notice as well so I wonder what Neil did wrong in his tests.

Furthermore, he says Outpost does a mediocre job blocking malware and exploits. I can tell you from first-hand experience this is not true as I sometimes frequent the darker corners of the internet & Agnitum's product hasn't failed me yet.

TaoPhoenix:

I zoomed in on this snip:
"Looking for the smallest, lightest protection available? The installer for Editors' Choice Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete (2014) would fit on a 3.5" diskette (if you could fine one). Its unusual antivirus component doesn't use virus signatures; rather, it detects threats by their behavior and other characteristics."

A, being a fan of Small and Light, that was nice! But see the note about behavior vs signatures. What if you got that to behave with a second AV program without them fighting each other? Could the combined power of the two approaches synergistically become "more than the sum of the parts"?

40hz:
A, being a fan of Small and Light, that was nice! But see the note about behavior vs signatures. What if you got that to behave with a second AV program without them fighting each other? Could the combined power of the two approaches synergistically become "more than the sum of the parts"?
-TaoPhoenix (February 15, 2014, 11:14 AM)
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Hard to say, but the AV players are aware of it. As a result, many of the big AV products (that are signature based) also include a heuristic/suspicious behavior scanning feature. Many people leave it off. And it's not necessarily turned on by default.

mouser:
I have for years been a fan of Eset's offerings -- their antivirus and then their combined antivirus and firewall.

Before switching to Eset I was a big fan of Agnitum.

From my standpoint, Eset has the best, most utilitarian and powerful user system, as far as user options and interface.

The options and alerts are excellent -- and they still have some firewall features that for some reason few have copied -- like when an alert pops up you can choose to ignore it for the current session (or once, or create a rule).

So many of the firewalls reviewed (and which get good ratings) offer so little control and information.  There really needs to be a distinction between truly flexible controllable firewalls like Eset, Outpost, and Comodo, which are in a different class than the others, that just silently do their job and offer you little information or control -- and little help if something is being silently blocked which shouldn't be.  It does alert me when anything tries to connect in or out which I like to know.

I love the clean interface of Eset's tools -- and they get just about every single thing right when it comes to organizing and presenting options, logs, alerts, etc.

HOWEVER, I have recently dumped Eset despite being a paying customer.  I have confirmed that their firewall makes my computer unstable and causes programs to occasionally hang and require a reboot to terminate.  Prior to windows 7, a known and apparently unfixable-by-them bug in their win xp x64 version would cause computer freeze and blue screen when attaching an external usb.  This was a known problem for years that i cast a blind eye to. When freezes started happening on my win7 machine, i had enough.

For the last week I've been trialing AVG internet security.  I tried a dozen others but AVG was the one that I found least offensive.  I might try outpost again, as I always liked Outpost, but right now AVG is doing pretty well by me.

I did not install the optional stuff like web browsing guards, identity guards, etc. -- and thankfully those are optional installs.  Those seem too likely to cause problems and slowdowns to me.

AVG does *not* offer the kind of fine granularity control of the powerful firewalls like Eset and Outpost, but it does offer more control and transparency than some of the truly minimal ones.  But my patience for micro-managing firewall access control rules has diminished over the years, so that's not bothering me as much as it would have in the past.

In terms of basic antivirus and firewall, i'm not unhappy with AVG, and the system performance and stability seem really excellent, which is my main concern these days.

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