We're all very much past the point of no return in integrating the Web as a daily part of our lives and, most dangerously, the workplace. With threats erupting from even the most innocuous of sources, and the lack of enough hours in the day to keep up with them all, it seems like a good time to consider a product like Trend Micro's Internet Security Pro to provide you with that extra few layers of protection.
The software is aimed at the home office and mobile crowd, tossing in the now nearly standard three PC license, a licensing scheme that goes a ways to improving its value for your money. And what you get for your purchase is quite a bit more than the usual spyware and anti-virus scanners.
It piles on the added protection with a two-way firewall that's undoubtedly tied to its parental controls feature and wireless network protection, which prevents unauthorized users on the same Wi-Fi network you're on from accessing your PC. As for the laptop-bound crowd, the Transaction Protector component hosts a Wi-Fi Advisor that judges whether a network is safe to connect to and a keyboard data entry encryption application should there be keyloggers lurking around.
Trend Micro also conveniently inserts a system tuner for clearing out the cookies and histories you accumulate browsing the Web and a rather handy Remote File Lock for password secured storage when you're away from your PC or, should the unthinkable happen, your computer is stolen.
That's a Whole Lot to Ask
Installing Internet Security Pro might just set you off on the wrong foot as it'll politely inform you that it works better without Lavasoft's Ad-Aware on your PC - at all – and prompts its uninstall routine to run. Real-time scanners can conflict with one other but there's still plenty of value in keeping them around as independent, on-demand scanners.
Microsoft's Windows Defender and built-in firewall aren't welcome to the party either and the application informs you it's best to disable them, which is somewhat acceptable. It would appear that the suite wants to shoulder all of the burden.
Getting around the different functions is a breeze with its simple to navigate main console. The features are grouped where you'd expect to find them and there's no right-clicking for extra added settings to be found, which is a mainstay with many applications.
As for the meat and potatoes of any security product, the included anti-virus and malware protection passed the cursory tests with flying colors although it's to be expected given the company's background handling such threats. Its firewall and parental controls, on the other hand, could use a bit of work.
The test system didn't give itself away to repeated port scans, preferring instead the good old "play dead" routine to keep the hounds at bay. While it handled that well enough, outbound connections were a mixed bag with a proper notification box popping up for any application attempting to access the Web. However, embedded video and flash files, which launch browser-based plug-ins, failed to show any such warning. So if you implicitly trust your Web browser you had better trust its plugins.
Page 2: There's Work to Be Done
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