jeep bernadene: ESET Smart Security 5 review

Posted by david b. on July 29, 2012

Outstanding usability and excellently balanced feature set make ESET Smart Security an unmistaken choice.

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Being light on system resources and offering a commendably high degree of Internet protection are prime ?business cards? of ESET Smart Security. The company behind this particular product, as well as quite a few other security oriented solutions, is truly an old stager in the industry, its origin dating back to the late 1980s when the first known computer viruses came to be. ESET has since succeeded in becoming one of the world?s most commercially successful IT security projects, with over 500 employees and millions of satisfied customers all over the globe. Covering the niches of antivirus, antispyware, mobile security and Internet security both for home and business, the vendor delivers all-inclusive protection, dedicated support for a vast customer base, and sets remarkable usability benchmarks.

Some of the things most commonly associated with ESET Smart Security are great user experience, well-balanced feature set and an extensive list of threats it is fit to take care of. More specifically, the benefits include proactive protection based on ESET?s innovative ThreatSense technology, outstanding performance, minimum annoyance, emphasis on timely updates, Host-Based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS), parental controls, antispam, game mode, external device scanning, and more.

Since the overall impression is derived from details, our intent here is to single out specific facts about this application and test it by several pre-defined criteria so as to measure its functionality and reliability, and put it all on a tangible scale.

System Requirements

Operating System:

Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / 7

Hardware:

Processor: Intel or AMD x86-x64
55 MB free disk space

Usability

Availability of 30-day free trial along with the commercial distributive calls forth the first choice you are to make here. Notwithstanding the pretty large functional load on the program, it turned out a trifle to use. Installation went smooth and quite fast, but for one minor thing that kind of added an additional click to the procedure, i.e. a screen asking whether you are willing to have the PUP (Potentially Unwanted Program) protection activated. We?d rather this feature was included into the security suite by default without the user being asked during setup. And still, this wasn?t really an issue, so the app installed within a little over a minute, which is perfectly fine. We noted that the software doesn?t require a mandatory reboot after setup ? that?s sort of a pleasure to know because this particular thing tends to annoy some users.

User interface might appear simplistic, but that?s definitely a positive trait. We believe the absence of upper menu to be a virtue, as all the main items are fitting perfectly into the left-hand navigation pane ? so why occupy excessive GUI space? We liked the color scheme, too. Light-blue is dominating here; we guess this contributes to the peace of mind the vendor tried to ?hard-code? into the app.

ESET Smart Security?s interface turned out to be sufficiently informative, displaying your current protection level split by a number of targeted areas. The ?Computer scan? tab provides additional options such as showing scan with a log in a new window and enabling shutdown after scan. Using ?Setup? menu, you can enable / disable specific protection modules within four sections: Computer (Real-time file system protection, HIPS, Gamer mode), Network (Personal Firewall), Web and email (Web access protection, Email client protection, Antispam protection), and Parental control. Clicking ?Tools? enables defining your security preferences, temporarily disabling protection, managing the quarantine, accessing advanced options etc. It?s handy that hovering with your mouse over GUI items displays brief infotips on what a particular feature does.

The product?s performance parameters ensure you don?t have to wait long for the key tasks to be completed. CPU usage goes up once in a while during regular updates, but this in no way affects productivity of your system. On the whole, ESET Smart Security is a really resource saving utility that doesn?t put much of a burden on a PC, which shows it to advantage as compared to most of the competing programs.

Features

What makes a good Internet security suite is a feature set that facilitates controls and contributes to protection on an appropriate level. Let?s see if that?s the case with ESET Smart Security 5. Below is a brief overview of each key feature integrated into this application:

ThreatSense Technology denotes ESET?s understanding of antivirus protection. This is a sophisticated engine composed of advanced heuristics (code analysis, emulation, generic signatures) and the conventional malware signatures, enabling timely detection of zero-day infections and new viruses belonging to known families. This contemporary approach is a step towards catching up with cyber criminals, no matter how hard an objective that is. ThreatSense proved to effectively detect and neutralize worms, viruses, trojans, rootkits, adware, potentially dangerous applications and other pests.
Antispyware feature complements the antivirus to respond to the varied digital threatscape out there. This component targets online parasites that aim at violating your privacy and deploying identity theft.
Host-Based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS) is liable for monitoring network activity to spot and cease unauthorized access attempt or other malicious behavior. The bad packets therefore get dropped to help you evade further outcomes of infestation, intrusion or unsolicited modifications made to your system.
Cloud-Enhanced Whitelisting, or ESET Live Grid, is a reputation-based technology powered by the cloud environment to ensure fast detection of malware items. This technique is capable of distinguishing between reputable files and viruses, thus you get protection against the newest bad stuff and social media exploits in real time.
To prevent contamination from optical storage devices (CD, DVD) or USB memory drives, ESET Smart Security accommodates Removable Media Control feature. It disables autorun from these drives and blocks by device ID.
Firewall complements the corresponding default feature provided by the operating system to augment protection value and implement additional counter-intrusion and anti-hack measures.
Antirootkit is a feature which is intended to expose and intercept malicious objects that are made to do a great job hiding certain processes on the compromised machine. Rootkits attempt to keep security software from detecting malware executables, thus promoting further infestation of a PC. ESET therefore has a countermeasure of its own for this latent menace.
Antispam functionality is aimed at blocking potentially dangerous or misleading emails, including attached objects that might be bundled with trojans or other insecure items.
Parental Controls feature makes it feasible to manage your kids? web-surfing activity, allowing restrictions by website category (adult, gambling etc.), specific URL and even the time spent online.
Internet Security Training is completely unique about ESET Smart Security. This comes in the form of interactive instructions on appropriate online behavior, outlining security tips and precautions to take while browsing the web.
Unwilling to get pop-ups and frustration from routine security tasks triggered while you are playing games on your PC? Gamer Mode does the trick here by suspending popup alerts, scanning and scheduled tasks when you are in full-screen mode. While your computer remains protected, the security modules require no interaction on your end. Gamer Mode also keeps you from getting distracted while viewing videos or doing full-screen presentations.

Efficiency

In terms of overall protection effectiveness, there is some room for ambiguity. Results obtained by a number of authoritative evaluation resources that tested ESET Smart Security 5 state it does not rank to be in the very top of the grading. For instance, AV-TEST?s latest scores by protection criterion are 3.5 out of 6.0 for both Windows XP and Windows 7, being decent results, yet lower than the industry average. Things with repair are somewhat worse, ranging 2.0-4.0 out of 6.0 for Windows XP and Windows 7 respectively, both results passing their certification. Despite the above somewhat mediocre rates, on the other hand, the product did a fairly good job in our unbiased test, detecting and removing most of the malicious components from the infested lab machine ? at least, none of the critical threats that could inflict serious damage to the system were missed. Furthermore, the latest AV-Comparatives retrospective test ranked ESET number 6 out of the total of 17 most popular security applications. Moreover, the really low false positives rate and good across-the-board user feedback are by no means to be neglected. From where we sit, we are mostly inclined to affirm that ESET Smart Security is a program that will keep you generally safe and allow for no irrecoverable system damage.

Help & Support

ESET?s support is split into two groups: home and business, each one containing an extensive number of options to get help when you need it. Home support (the one applicable for ESET Smart Security) is composed of Frequently Asked Questions, documentation, knowledgebase videos, user forum, online form for submitting your case (not to be confused with live support). In regards to direct support, the telephone contacts are kind of hard to find on their website. The ?Contact? page does contain the customer service number, but shouldn?t it be indicated right there on ?Support? page as well? You can additionally follow customer support in Twitter where they add links to new articles and videos related to a variety of issues. But the really unique thing about this product is the ?Cybesecurity Training? interactive module which appears to be a comprehensive and thorough tutorial on how to protect your PC and online identity ? this is probably one of the best instances of customer security orientation that we have seen.

+/- (Pros/Cons)

Trial version available
Easy to use
Light on system resources
Very low false positives rate
Remarkable parental controls
?Cybersecurity training? feature

Unstable repair scores
Support: no live chat, phone numbers hard to locate
Expensive

Bottom line

ESET Smart Security is one of the least obtrusive Internet security suites we have tested. Its features are more than enough for assuring convenience and appropriate protection for your online activities. While repair efficiency and overall protection scores are fluctuating across different tests, the chance of outer intrusion going through, or critical infections infiltrating into your machine is negligible. Outstanding usability and excellently balanced feature set make this product an unmistaken choice.

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Monday, July 30, 2012

ESET Smart Security 5 review | Privacy PC