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Originally published at Internet.com For spam, viruses, and spyware — and basically anything and everything that can create havoc on your PC — Trend Micro offers its Internet Security 2007 Plus TrendSecure suite and standalone products, Trend Micro AntiSpyware and Trend Micro Anti-Spam. If you're not familiar with the Trend Micro name, you've probably heard of "PC-cillin." This year, Trend Micro has changed the name and added powerful new features.
Trend Micro Internet Security Screenshot The suite offers all-in-one protection against viruses, spam, and spyware, while the standalone products deliver precise protection as indicated by their names. The suite also comes with an innovative new set of online tools, called "TrendSecure," that protect online transactions, safeguard private files in the event a laptop is lost or stolen, and secure cell phones against viruses.
At $49.95 for a yearly subscription, the suite is available for a reasonable price. And, taking a page from Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare subscription policy, the Trend Micro subscription covers up to three PCs on a wireless (or wired) home network.
More Than Just a Name Change?
Trend Micro is a venerable player in the utilities arena, with its PC-cillin product commanding a long-standing position as one of the most popular antivirus tools on the market. The 2007 suite incorporates its predecessor's PC-cillin engine and comes with new features to root out rootkits, as well as spyware, phishing schemes, spam, hackers, viruses, WiFi attacks, and smartphone threats. In execution, the suite covers all of the security bases.
The interface is intuitive and easy to use. It serves a series of vertical tabs that provide access to the program's main functions: anti-virus, firewall, etc. Click a well-marked tab and the screen displays status and options for that feature.
For those familiar with the prior PC-cillin program, the interface has changed little. The main difference is a button on the upper, right-hand side of the screen that offers access to the TrendSecure online services.
Trend Micro AntiSpyware and Trend Micro Anti-Spam, on the other hand, are separate, standalone products that are designed for those who want to round out their Internet protection. For example, instead of purchasing an entire security suite, users who already own an anti-virus program can purchase Anti-Spyware or Anti-Spam to increase their PC security.
In last year's programs, the standalone versions of Anti-Spyware and Anti-Spam offered superior protection over the same features found in the suite, mostly due to several engine enhancements. This year, however, the security engines are identical, as are the features. As a result, there is no longer a difference between the anti-spyware and anti-spam protection offered in the suite and through the standalone programs.
Viral Threats
As you would expect, the suite's anti-virus engine detects and removes viruses and scans for the latest threats that reside in e-mails (inbound POP3 and outbound SMTP and popular web-based mail services), internet downloads, removable media, and PCs.
Trend Micro automatically updates the program so that it recognizes the latest viruses and their twisted brethren. The program also performs regular scans of your computer, alerts you to operating system and browser vulnerabilities, and provides access to Windows updates.
The versatile and comprehensive program offers lots of options to schedule scans at different times and intervals, and the options are easy to configure. If you're more concerned about spyware than viruses or Microsoft vulnerabilities, for example, you can quickly configure those scans to occur more often.
Firewall
The suite's personal firewall creates a software barrier between a PC and the internet to intercept hackers and attacks while also monitoring inbound and outbound communications and snagging programs that are trying to access the internet (sometimes an indication of a malicious program). To reduce the number of annoying pop-ups, the suite does an admirable job of scanning and identifying most well-known programs — essentially pre-screening the programs that should legitimately connect to the internet.
Useful wireless network monitoring features prevent unauthorized users from accessing and invading your wireless home network. With a single subscription, this feature allows you to manage, configure, and update security on up to three PCs on a home network — a definite plus.
By offering this convenient and reasonable household license, Trend Micro recognizes that many consumers have multiple PCs in their homes — again, a major mark in the product's favor. On the competitive front, Symantec also offers support for up to three PCs in its security suite as does Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare.
Trend Micro AntiSpyware
Trend Micro Anti-Spyware provides comprehensive spyware detection and removal, as well as real-time active defense protection, one-click privacy cleanup, a restore utility, and automatic updates. (These features are also provided in the suite.)
The program competently and quickly scans a PC for known spyware threats that are listed in its regularly updated database. When spyware is discovered, the program serves an option to allow or deny access to the suspect program as well as easy-to-follow tools to safely remove it. An impressive feature, the program can remove spyware without interrupting your internet connection.
The program monitors a PC for suspicious, spyware-like behavior and lets you know when spyware is running in a PC's memory or attempting to install itself. Unfortunately, in use, some of the program's alerts were false alarms for legitimate programs that were running on our test system.
When a security program constantly produces false alarms, users tend to ignore the warnings, or worse, turn off the feature to eliminate the annoyance. Of course, this is an issue that can't be placed solely on Trend Micro — it's a problem shared by the anti-spyware products from Trend Micro's competitors.
A convenient "One-Click Privacy Cleanup" feature protects privacy by erasing browser and PC history, temporary Internet files, cookies, and other "trackware" files that indicate where you've been and what you've been doing. And the Trend Micro CWShredder program is designed to remove the variants of the CoolWebSearch browser hijack.
The anti-spyware engine takes advantage of technology that was obtained through Trend Micro's recent acquisition of anti-spyware publisher InterMute. This technology offers innovations such as the "Venus Spy Trap" behavioral monitoring and the "Rootkit Common Module" that blocks rootkits — Trojan horse-style programs that capture passwords and data and create back doors into systems.
While it's hard to quantify exactly how much these additions improve security, the program did a solid job of identifying the invaders that our test system encountered.
When removing spyware, the restore utility protects a PC by creating a backup of the files that it removes. This allows for quick restoration in the event a useful or legitimate program is inadvertently removed. For now, Trend Micro AntiSpyware is available in North America, Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.
Trend Micro Anti-Spam
At press time, the Trend Micro Internet Security Suite offered comprehensive anti-spam features while the stand-alone Trend Micro Anti-Spam was available in a pilot, pre-release version. The anti-spam features block spam using heuristics technology, route suspicious messages into a spam quarantine folder, and enable you to create approved and blocked sender lists.
As you would expect, the features are maintained via on-demand or automatic updates and seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Outlook by adding their anti-spam options to the program's toolbar. The features offer three levels of spam protection that are organized by categories. As is the case with any security program, the higher the security that you set, the more false positives you can expect to encounter.
In use, at the "medium" setting, the anti-spam engine did an admirable job of identifying and routing spam to a quarantine folder, although, as expected, some legitimate messages were flagged while some spam was let through. At the "high" setting, the number of legitimate e-mails that were flagged went way up.
Unfortunately, detecting and identifying spam is an inexact science. And even when protected by Trend Micro's anti-spam features, our test system still received a pesky e-mail from everyone's uncle (a general, no less) who resides in Nigeria and always has a wad of cash to give away.
No Fraud
To identify threats that are designed to steal important personal and financial information such as bank account and credit card numbers, the suite's fraud defense features attempt to identify online phishing scams. If you've received numerous e-mail inquiries from banks that you've never dealt with before — and that's just about everyone with an e-mail account — you're familiar with these pesky and potentially dangerous schemes.
The anti-phishing feature is easy to set up and notifies you of the latest risks. When possible, the program blocks sites that it recognizes as fraudulent ones. Most users have learned to never enter personal or financial information into a Web form that has been prompted by an unsolicited e-mail. But the suite's fraud defense features are a good second line of defense in the event that one should become careless.
Parental Controls allow you to manage children's internet activity by blocking Web sites that may serve inappropriate content. The program lets you block by categories — for example, gambling, sex, and more. But there's no option to organize blocked sites by user, which is a limitation. Also, in general, it's rather involved to add new sites to blocked lists. The process could be easier.
TrendSecure
Something that sets Trend Micro Internet Security 2007 apart from other security suites is TrendSecure, a set of useful online services that are designed to extend security beyond your home PC, such as when you are using a public computer or are connected to the internet via a wireless hotspot.
Trend Micro rightly realized that computer users often access the internet outside of their homes and are exposed to threats elsewhere. The TrendSecure online services effectively address this problem. Bravo.
The "Transaction Guard" feature, the most useful of the online services, protects transactions that you conduct online via public PCs in internet cafes, hotels, airports and kiosks, or through your own PC when connected at wireless hotspots at coffee houses, WiFi-enabled municipalities, and more.
The "Spyware Monitor" examines information as you connect to secure sites and detects and removes spyware. A brilliant "Secret Keyboard" feature offers an onscreen keyboard that allows you to enter passwords without using the PC's keyboard. This is designed to foil those underhanded programs that attempt to record keystrokes.
A "Remote File Lock" feature protects private files in the event that your laptop is lost or stolen, a common problem these days – witness the recent spate of well-publicized stories covering the loss of personal or confidential data that has been the result of an employee's pilfered notebook PC. Once you discover that your notebook is missing, the Remote File Lock feature enables you to remotely lock your files via the internet.
The "Trend Micro Mobile Security" feature protects a cell phone against viruses and other threats. While these services are useful, the number of cell phones that the product currently supports are limited. If your phone isn't supported, the feature is useless.
By offering these services online, Trend Micro reduces the size of the suite's installation on your hard drive and saves space. For now, the TrendSecure online services are available in English and Japanese.
The Bottom Line
Reasonably priced and loaded with powerful features — especially the excellent online security services — and offering support for up to three PCs in a home, Trend Micro Internet Security 2007 Plus TrendSecure is a first rate security program. It's definitely one to consider.
North American pricing provides one household license for one year at $49.95 and includes protection for up to three PCs and the TrendSecure online services. New services and features that are released during the subscription period are provided for free. Once the subscription expires, a 12-month subscription renewal costs $49.95.
Trend Micro offers free phone, email, and chat support as well as diagnostic tools for remote support.
Internet Security 2007 Plus TrendSecure is available now for online purchase, and a 30-day trial evaluation release can be downloaded from the Trend Micro site.
Trend Micro Anti-Spyware costs $29.95 and Trend Micro Anti-Spam, which was in a pilot, pre-release program at press time, can be downloaded for free from the Trend Micro Web site. Pricing at press time for Trend Micro Anti-Spam had not yet been determined.
Author: Wayne N Kawamoto
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