F-Secure Internet Security 2006

With free software available to protect all aspects of your home computer, companies targeting consumers need to fight hard to ensure their software is worth the money. This latest suite from F-Secure has all the right components but are they good enough?

Features
The suite comes with anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, anti-spam and parental control software. This pretty much pulls together everything you might need to protect your computer, though some elements are better than others.

Performance
The anti-virus protection is particularly strong. You can do a scan from disk before you start installing, which is reassuring if you think you might already have virus problems, and the CD automatically works as a boot disk if you’re in real trouble. The software has had a 100 per cent success rate at stopping viruses thrown at it by independent research company Virus Bulletin (www.virusbtn.com) since 2002.The firewall is also perfectly competent, passing the various tests we threw at it.

The anti-spyware works alongside the anti-virus, which is sensible, and means you only have one regular scan to perform. However, it insisted we uninstall Ad-Aware and Spybot, both trusted free anti-spyware programs that shouldn’t really cause such major clashes.

The parental filter seemed to work quite well, blocking out the porn and racist sites we threw at it, but letting through articles on breast cancer and neutral encyclopedia entries about racist groups rather than those promoting them. However, we were disappointed by the anti-spam software, which seemed to stop very little spam.

Ease of use
The software is very well organised, with a main screen that displays the status of your protection. This is then broken down into its various sub-sections for each type of threat, except for anti-virus and anti-spyware, which are linked together. The coherence across the product is what a security suite should be all about, and where the added value over free software comes in.

Value for money
Whether you use free software or paid-for software like this depends on the effort you want to put in. A suite like this is a once-only installation that covers all your needs, and it can be left to its own protective devices. Free software needs more looking after and doesn’t come with added benefits like telephone support (which F-Secure offers for free). If you’ve got the time to configure and look after it, and are happy with email or peer support, go for the free route. Otherwise, F-Secure offers 12 months worth of peace of mind for less than £40 (or less than £80 if you want to install it on a home network of up to three PCs), though you may still need to look elsewhere to eliminate spam from your life.