There's Work to be Done

There are a similar batch of inconsistencies with the program's Parental Controls or more aptly named "no you can't do that" feature.

The asterisk is your friend here as explicitly banning a domain won't block a subdomain from loading, which isn't as bad the program allowing the use of an IP address to access a banned domain. The two "faults" could easily be remedied with a few recommendations from the program on how to properly block a website, and as for the IP address, a simple DNS resolve wouldn't be something out of the ordinary.

A bit of extra work to keep things secure shouldn't dissuade you from taking a look at this program. Some of its advanced features prove quite useful, such as Keystroke Encryption that blocks keyloggers from taking a peek at what you're entering into Web forms. It's limited to Internet Explorer and it won't block URLs you've typed into your address bar or terms entered into the search bar from being intercepted, but it did prevent the test keylogging software from picking up the data entered into a number of forms.

That brings up an interesting question on how exactly a keylogger was allowed to run on the test system at all. Still, it did make a good effort at preventing me from viewing webpages devoted to keylogging software. In short it's a nice enough feature to have but you'll want to keep tabs on who has access to your machines and their intentions.

A look at the Data Theft Prevention feature shows a handy list to plug in partial bits of important information that you don't want to leak out of your PC, by any means. This can include credit card numbers, names, or you can plug in your own categories and expand on the data you want to exclude from being able to send.

It works quite well spitting out warnings when attempting to send out emails or Web forms with information on the banned list although it doesn't appear to cover all common chat programs or protocols, not that it claims to. For instance, it did allow Trillian to send "banned" words, the same with IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which given the feature's self-appointed protector title, seems a bit counter-intuitive.

The Break Down

Trend Micro's Internet Security Pro fights the good fight on many a front and if you can get past some glaring sticking points you'll find a suite that has a solid feature set and can handle most threats well enough.

Its gaps in protection aren't all that glaring but the issues that sprang up -- issues shared with other security suites to be fair -- proves that you can't be reliant on a single tool set to keep yourself safe. This makes the program's insistence on handling all your needs without interference all the more jarring.

Overall it's worthy of that Pro tag they slapped on to the end but we're not yet at that stage where you can put your full trust into a single piece of software. That said, maintaining a good set of PC security procedures is still in your best interest.

Trend Micro Internet Security Pro:

Availability: Now at http://www.trendmicro.com

Pricing: $69.95 3 User Licenses, Includes 1 year of updates, additional 1 year renewal $49.95, multiple year discounts are offered.

System Requirements: 350MB storage space, additional 1GB needed for Total Recovery; Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or Vista 32/64bit; 1GHz Pentium CPU Recommended for Vista, 450MHz for Windows XP; 512MB of memory recommended for XP, 1GB of memory recommended for Vista.

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This article was first published on EnterpriseITPlanet.com.