McAfee Internet Security Suite 2009 is other candidate tested for our top ten best… purpose. This software is projected by McAfee, a brand security producer. We tested McAfee Web Security 2009 in different environments and we found that soft is strongest enough to offer your computer high virus protection if you don’t surf the net frequently. McAfee it requires a good computer because this version of program use a lot of memory and processor to run in background or when you scan your computer.
The 2009 version of McAfee Internet Security can be downloaded for free from producer site in trial version or can be downloaded for free directly from our website. The trial version on McAfee Web Security Suite is available 30 days for free. After this trial period you must purchase your full license of soft directly from MCAfee website.
McAfee is efficient for detection of known viruses and malware. This version of software has a new detection engine, called Artemis. This heuristic detection engine was tested in our labs and we found that version not very reliable. Artemis is good in detection of viruses and malware threats but is very low in performance if you want to detect new and unknown threats.
McAfee Internet Security engine is almost incapable to detect a danger if the signature of virus is not present in the database. Updates are essential if you want to run this software in safe way. McAfee heuristic engine it has a very low detection rate, and behavioral detection needs to be much improved in the next versions.
Installation process is simple and intuitive for a usual computer user. The installer run quickly and you are protected by the threats just after few clicks. McAfee Internet Security was tested by independent laboratories that found this version of McAfee at medium level in detection of malware and viruses. Anyway, is a little better than other Internet Security Suites competitors.
We tested McAfee and we found scanning speed very slow. This came with a high resources consuming and with not very high rate of detection. We suppose Artemis engine detection is the reason because this version of McAfee Internet Security is slow. The detected files are sender automatically to McAfee Laboratory where are tested and if the files are infected, new signatures will be arrived with the next update.
Another feature of McAfee Web Security is the capacity to use the local virus signature database with an online database. This improvement was introduced by Artemis behavioral detection engine.
McAfee Web Suite interface is well designed and intuitive. The menu is split in two categories: “Computer & Files” and “Internet & Network”. Almost all needed information can be viewed and accessed direct from the front page of the menu. Anyway, the administration menu of McAfee Internet Security 2009 can be improved. For example, if you want to search for a feature you must dig in the menus, because the help section is not very user friendly.
Other useful features of this version of McAfee Internet Security are:
- backups – possibility to backup important files.
- parental control module – this can be used to block / limit the access of the children to dangerous Internet resources.
- Firewall – used to protect the computer against hackers which can attack the computer coming from network.
- antispam module – this can be used just after a little training. After that you are protected by unsolicited emails.
Our conclusion is McAfee Internet Security can be improved but it still makes a good job if it is used on a powerful computer, but is a lot of distance to compare with our top ranking best Internet Security suites: Kaspersky and ZoneAlarm.
