Looking for a upper class program to protect your computer? Computer Associates (CA) may be able to help you out, for about $70.00. I have tested Internet Security Suite Plus 2008 bundle that CA offers, to get a feel for all of the programs they offer. The Security Suite comes with Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Firewall,Anti-Spam, Anti-Phishing (my favorite tool ;),) and a $10,000 "coverage plan" to protect you from the world. Certainly all these features are more than enough for most users.
The entire program installed very smoothly being the only form of protection this computer would receive. Once installed, one may be surprised at the speed that your computer will load even with this program protecting every piece of information. CA loads effortlessly along with other start up programs causing seemingly no delay. Right-clicking on the CA icon next to the clock will bring up a menu with options to update, turn off various features for sets amount of time, or to bring up the home menu. The home menu is very user friendly making sure to notify you of any vulnerabilities such as old updates. From here you can access the Firewall, Anti-Virus,Anti-Spyware, and Spam features. Upon start up if you use software for your e-mail rather than the web you may notice that it will integrate with your e-mail program such as Outlook Express when you open it. CA will guide you through this and is very simple and effective as another spam filter.
CA's Firewall is great for anything you want a firewall to do. Offering to block, allow, or force programs to ask for permission to do anything, very similar to various competitor firewalls like Zone Alarm. CA will also allow you to change default settings and various levels of security involving cookies and protecting private information; all which be changed, or shut off. The entire firewall can be shut off just like all other sections of the Suite for whatever reason you may need to do so. The Anti-Virus software is on the slightly above average level. Usually constantly updating itself, has the same scan options as most Anti-Virus programs. The protection itself is a 3.5 out of 5 because it seemed to miss a few viruses on my computer until it had to do a full system scan to clean them. These malicious programs weren't detected a month ago. This should be watched for because all the components combined, should in theory stop everything from getting in let alone install on your computer. Which would make the scan options good for scanning unopened or compressed files.
The spyware protection is excellent, keeping out all malicious spyware programs for over a month now. The scan is pretty short and sweet, and cleaned out the infections that were already on the computer easily. Similar to the Anti-Virus, the spyware definition list is updated constantly, behaving like Panda's programs with updates sometimes more than 5 times a day. Overall the program is great, having little weight on your computers speed while protecting everything a computer user would need protected. The license covers installment for three users, more than likely enough for a household.
Only one issue that is somewhat annoying with the Spam program is that some compressed files will have their extensions edited into .EFWs. This is some kind of form of e-mail attachment, and files such as .RARs may be compressed or downloaded into this format automatically. Luckily this is merely just annoying, because now you will just have to right click these files and select "Open With" and pick your decompression program like Win RAR or WinZIP. This is a slightly common problem, and I am sure it won't take too long to be addressed. CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2008 receives a 9 out 10 for great protection and limited problems. I encourage those who use the computer frequently for business purposes, or store important information on their computer to purchase this program. CA will hardly slow anything down on your computer even for users with 512 mb of RAM. They will even pay liability if anything somehow does manage to get across your computer and wreak havoc, which is a nice way of saying "we've got your back".
Click here to view CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2008
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