Internet Security

Symantec acquired the security vendor in 2008 to increase its worldwide market share with consumers in new and emerging regional markets. Since the acquisition, PC Tools maintains a separate development operation from Symantec's consumer business unit (responsible for the Norton Internet Security Suite), and PC Tools Internet Security - its entry in the internet security suite market — comes with strong heuristic malware detection, but it's weaker in other areas such as traditional malware detection.

PC Tools uses its own antivirus protection, and at first glance PC Tools Internet Security appeared to score very well in AV-Test.org's extensive malware-detection tests for both the on-demand and on-access detection of 2735 files, macro viruses, and scripts, scoring nearly 100 per cent in each.

However, PC Tools missed at least two variations of the Conficker worm in both on-demand and on-access testing. Against the zoo Trojan horses, worms, password-stealers, and other nasties, PCTools identified on average only 58 per cent of the 722,372 collected samples, placing it second to last, just ahead of Comodo.

But on behaviour-based detection of malware, PC Tools Internet Security scored the highest of any suite we've tested. In overall detection, PC Tools produced a warning 93 per cent of the time; detected and blocked 87 per cent of the malware; and removed 80 per cent of the malware.

PC Tools Internet Security also produced strong numbers for detecting and removing rootkits — stealth malware used to hide infections from PC users and security software alike. It successfully removed all nine active rootkits we tested it against.

For performance, AV-Test recorded long file scan times of up to 173 seconds for on-demand scans of a 741MB file. On-access file scans required 66 seconds, compared with only 41 seconds to copy the same file on a system without antivirus installed. In informal testing, PC Tools Internet Security appeared to slow our Windows XP machine more noticeably after installation than other security suites.

In proactively identifying unknown malware for which it doesn't yet have a signature, PC Tools Internet Security scored below average. In tests with 20-week-old signature files, it identified just 29 per cent of malware samples. And on four-week-old signature files it identified only 23 per cent.

According to AV-Test.org, PC Tools Internet Security responds moderately fast to new widespread malware attacks, typically between 6 and 8 hours. But PC Tools also produced the fewest signature updates per month of any suite tested: 34 in January 2009, 30 in February 2009, and 34 in March 2009, averaging 1.1 per day, compared with over 200 per day from Norton.

PC Tools gears its interface for the average consumer; as such, it doesn't offer many configuration options, and for some, that's just fine — it's user friendly; just set it and forget it. For the more advanced, however, such a simple interface will feel constraining. There is little documentation beyond a nominal Quick Start guide, so creating a firewall rule is less intuitive within PC Tools Internet Security than within Windows Firewall.

The suite includes the optional PC Tools Browser Defender toolbar (for Internet Explorer only), which provides antiphishing protection. Unlike many phishing filters, PC Tools does not use lists from antiphishing sites.

Instead, PC Tools relies on heuristic analysis to identify phishing attempts; the company told us that "blacklisting is no longer an effective method of protecting against phishing sites as in our research we found that sites were up for less than 24 hours".

Once installed, Browser Defender missed a few freshly reported phishing sites (less than 2 hours old) listed on DSL Reports Phish Track, but correctly warned against sites more than few hours old.

PC Tools Internet Security does not include parental controls or backup. The company told PC World that "these added components cater for a small [percentage] of the market and unnecessarily bloat a product, often making it cumbersome to install and run".