


- Zonealarm security review install#
- Zonealarm security review full#
- Zonealarm security review software#
Another welcome new feature is the automatic kill control: this gives SmartDefence Advisor the ability to disable programs attempting dangerous or damaging activity without the need for user input. The SmartDefence service also provides real-time updates and new attack-protection capabilities, and is pretty much the brains behind most ZoneAlarm services (from the DefenceNet community input for spyware attacks, to the Advisor for deploying policy automatically). Thanks to the SmartDefence Advisor introduced by Zone Labs last year, the firewall is as straightforward as the anti-spyware tool, because the Advisor passes default policy from the SmartDefence team at Zone Labs directly to the user. The third layer is an OS firewall to protect the OS, Registry and file system from attack.

Zonealarm security review software#
Effectively, what you get is the proven ZoneAlarm stateful stealth firewall to guard the network perimeter, while a second firewall wraps itself around every software application to protect good programs from bad.
Zonealarm security review install#
Should you install an application that executes a spyware component that would otherwise burrow deep into the OS, or fall foul of an attempted root kit exploit (enabling direct manipulation of OS information at the lowest level), another new feature comes to the rescue: the Triple Defence Firewall. We were pleased to see the addition of a pause/continue function for the scanner though, and a quarantine management area for those infected files you don’t want to clean. There isn’t much that’s actually new with the anti-virus tool beyond the spyware integration, but there wasn’t much wrong with the excellent Computer Associates’ module anyway. However, having completed this once, you only need to leave the scanner in Intelligent mode, which scans fewer files and does so in a quarter of the time.
Zonealarm security review full#
The only negative is that the full system scan took a relatively slow eight minutes, 24 seconds to complete the scanning of 112,251 files. It even survived our serving up a full menu of spyware nasties, matching class leader Spy Sweeper for detection effectiveness. In testing, the spyware scanner was effective against homepage hijacking attempts as well as unwanted installation of browser helper objects. And if spyware is detected, the program provides detailed information and advice regarding treatment. Signature updates for anti-virus and spyware are handled automatically in the background and with little impact upon system resources. Ease of use has always been one of ZoneAlarm’s strengths and, while you can tweak and configure every component if you wish, the default automatic spyware treatment setting is as fire-and-forget as you could want.
