Zone alarm internet security suite 2009

It's tough! To guard against attack by hackers across the Internet, a personal firewall puts all the computer's ports in stealth mode. They don't show up as closed or open; they're not visible at all from outside. I run various tests to make sure the firewall is doing this and similar jobs. ZoneAlarm has always passed, but this time three separate scans showed port open.

This is the Remote Procedure Call port, a dangerous entry point for malware. I supplied Check Point with log files, and my contacts there identified an error in program control that could cause this slip-up under certain circumstances; a fix is now in place. They also pointed out that if a program tried to do anything malicious using this port it would be stopped. My experience in testing the product's ability to block malware infestation certainly bears out that claim, so I won't downgrade the otherwise-stellar firewall based on this fluke occurrence.

Port-based attacks aren't the only way hackers can get into your system. Malicious or hacked Web sites may host drive-by downloads or malware designed to exploit vulnerabilities in your browser or operating system. I used the Core Impact penetration tool to attack a ZoneAlarm installation using a number of these exploits.

As always, some of them failed simply because the target system was no longer vulnerable. ZoneAlarm blocked one based on its suspicious behavior. It detected and quarantined the rest, specifically identifying them as exploits. That's good protection!

Early versions of ZoneAlarm used to fluster users with an unending fusillade of pop-up queries. Every time a program attempted Internet or network access for the first time the firewall would ask whether or not to allow it. Most users aren't qualified to make a considered response, and many just learned to always click Allow. Not good! Check Point has addressed this problem in several ways. When SmartDefense Advisor is enabled as it is by default the program automatically configures access for over two million programs.

Also, for the first three weeks, the level of program control defaults to Auto-learn. In this mode the programs you use are automatically granted access permission. I'm not sure I like that; I would turn it up to maximum right away and live with a few pop-ups. With program control at the maximum level, ZoneAlarm's OSFirewall monitors the behavior of all programs and offers to block those acting suspiciously. In this release, OSFirewall tracks about 30 new suspicious behaviors, many of them related to attacks on the security suite itself.

You won't see pop-ups about these if SmartDefense Advisor is turned on. By default it handles such threats silently. I'm a big fan of no-questions-asked program control systems, like that of Norton Internet Security Norton allows all access for known good programs, eliminates known bad programs, and keeps a watchful eye on the rest, blocking any that misbehave.

Kaspersky Internet Security takes the concept even further, applying varying levels of restrictions to keep unknown programs from modifying specific sensitive system areas. But ZoneAlarm has been extremely successful at cutting the number of pop-up queries to a bare minimum, bringing the formerly chatty app level with the competition in terms of not bothering the user. Many malicious programs need to "phone home" to get updates or transmit stolen personal data. Some of these try to get around traditional program control by forcing approved programs to do their bidding, in a variety of ways.

I ran a dozen "leak test" programs to see how ZoneAlarm handled these sneaky techniques. Naturally, I set the program control level to maximum before this test. ZoneAlarm quarantined one piece of malware and prevented several others from running, calling them known malware. It handled those even when set to Auto-learn. All but one of the rest were blocked by OSFirewall or other protective elements. That one holdout bothered me, so I enabled two advanced program-control features.

Even with these options turned on, that one test consistently managed to communicate without being caught. And with the advanced program control turned on, ZoneAlarm reverted to its old chatty self. During installation of Yahoo!

Messenger messages popped up a dozen times. Blocking all but one leak test is a reasonable level of protection, however, and much better than most suites manage. BitDefender blocked just over half of them, for example, and F-Secure detected just one based on its behavior. ZoneAlarm scans files on demand, on access, and on schedule.

By default, it schedules a weekly scan for viruses and spyware, but you can change to a simple daily or monthly schedule. It scans incoming and outgoing e-mail as well. ZoneAlarm still relies on Kaspersky's technology for antivirus scanning, teamed with its in-house antispyware engine. That means that each full scan is actually two scans, one for viruses and one for spyware.

West Coast Labs and ICSA Labs certify Kaspersky's technology for both detection and removal of viruses; West Coast gives it additional checkmark certification for detection of Trojan horses, spyware, and malware in general.

All but one of ZoneAlarm's test results were identical to Kaspersky's. Both scored 5 of 5 points for responding quickly to new malware and 2 of 5 points for slow scanning. The only difference was 3 points for ZoneAlarm and 4 for Kaspersky in the malware-cleaning category. Do note that these results apply to version 7. ZoneAlarm claims much faster scanning in the current version, and my tests bear this out. I install the suite on test systems infested with malware samples of many varieties, including adware, spyware, rookits, Trojans, worms, and rogue antispyware.

Most of the installations were uneventful. One system kept hanging at the spyware scan, but running the scan in Safe Mode solved that problem. On another system, real-time protection kept reporting the same threat in memory over and over. ZoneAlarm was completely unable to remove the threat, and the real-time warnings prevented me from launching a full scan.

In the end, I had to tell ZoneAlarm to ignore that particular threat temporarily. The full scan cleaned things up. I would have appreciated some advice from the program here. Would the average user feel confident in deciding to ignore malware temporarily? It does seem counterintuitive.

One system crashed with a blue-screen error during the installation. Thereafter it went into a vicious cycle, crashing shortly after every reboot. ZoneAlarm tech support sent a very elaborate set of instructions and REG files designed to make the system create a full memory dump on the next crash, along with instructions for uploading them the resulting file for analysis. Based on the dump, the technicians identified a bug in one of the malware samples that caused the problem and jokingly suggested that I ask for an update.

But in the real world we had no success ending the blue-screen death spiral, even after four days of back-and-forth. ZoneAlarm effectively killed this test system. Good thing it was only a virtual machine. If it had been a real machine, the only solution would have been wipe it completely. I scanned several systems and noticed that the results looked really, really bad.

ZoneAlarm totally missed many of the threats and failed to thoroughly remove many of those it did detect. Then I realized that I had been running a deep scan immediately after installation, before it had gone through the initial process of updating detection signatures. I went back to those systems, launched the update manually, and rescanned. Things started looking better. But maybe ZoneAlarm should warn impatient users that any scan launched before the initial update won't be very effective.

Despite running separate antivirus and antispyware scans, the suite completed a scan of my standard clean test system in just over 20 minutes. The average is a bit over 30 minutes. A repeated scan was marginally faster, but nothing like the blazing speed of a repeat scan using Kaspersky which doesn't rescan files that haven't changed. The most serious threats get repaired or quarantined during the scan. For less risky items, or items for which the initial action failed, ZoneAlarm's scan-results page recommends an action: repair, quarantine, rename, delete, or delete on reboot.

When you click Apply ZoneAlarm performs the requested action. If that fails, ZoneAlarm escalates to the next action. It's similar to the system used in BitDefender Total security , but it works much more quickly and doesn't leave you with unhandled items. After performing all the scans, I scored the results. Assess take with you truth plus goes very likely distinction for various commodity futures as well supplements. You could test to locate useful guides prime features. Click on the triviality consider the alternative investor look Zonealarm Internet Security Suite Search this site.

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