Just got back from vacation, getting ready (I hope) to do a more thorough treatment. But here's my first impression.
In this version KIS has crossed a line in usability
In the past there were a couple of places where I didn't quite understand what it was doing. Now this applies to much of the application. In particular, they've added categories of applications: "High Trusted", "Low Trusted", etc. When the system pops up a warning that an app is doing something that might be naughty, you're (generally) given several choices. One of these is
Allow (with sub-choices of
Allow once only and
Allow always. A separate choice is
Make Trusted. What the heck is the difference between saying to "allow always" versus "make trusted"? I just don't get it. I'm as expert a computer user as you're likely to find. If I don't get what's going on, it's a good bet that your average user will be completely floundering.
If you make security too complicated, people will ignore it. Faced with these perplexing choices, users are going to guess, and that's no way to be secure. So they may have made the tool more powerful -- on paper. But in real life, it will do a worse job.
Another thing bothering me is the way it scans applications proactively (I think as part of their heuristic filtering, where they try to identify problems before they occur). A program that's never been run before is scanned, and this takes 15-20 seconds. Sometimes when one process is spawning another, the parent proc things that the child has failed because it's taking so long. The result of this is that I can't use the SUPER video converter while KIS is running (it seems to create child programs dynamically). So their tighter security is forcing me to turn off the security altogether -- another case of theoretical improvements forcing me to use the system in an unsafe manner.
Disclosure: I'm evaluating a free NFR copy given to me by a Kaspersky sales rep. No strings were attached.
