*NEW!*
Trend Micro Internet Security 2010
We're sad to say, Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 hasn't improved that much over last year's effort.
While the software looks good and is easy to use, its overall effectiveness still needs a lot of work.
For starters, the real-time antivirus protection only stopped about 50% of incoming virus and malware attacks we tested with.
And, this is their Internet Security Suite.
Even with the firewall enabled, total PC protection was far below acceptable levels.
IMPROVED FEATURES
Better parental controls
Lighter resource use
Nice user interface
Easy installation
Resource usage was decent, but disappointingly manual scanning didn't pick up the majority of known infections.
The Parental Controls were a little better than last year, but still only average across the board. Overall, Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 really needs to improve their product next year in order to be true contenders in the
antivirus firewall and Internet security suite market.
Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 Features
-
- Real-time Protection
Protects your PC in real-time against viruses, spyware, and malware.
This means you don't have to actively scan files to have the security software working to protect your PC.
-
- Infected File Removal
Scans and removes infected files.
Files that are infected are prevented from infecting other files on your PC (or other PCs).
-
- Spyware Removal
Scans and removes spyware threats.
Spyware is treated the a similar stance to viruses: as a threat to your personal and PC security.
-
- Email Protection
Scans and protects incoming and outgoing email.
Email remains one of the most common virus infection methods, so messages are scanned before they're delivered into your inbox or sent from your PC.
-
- Web Mail Protection
Scans and protects incoming and outgoing email.
Even though most popular webmail services like GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, and AOL all include antivirus scanning, a second layer of defense is smart.
-
- Instant Messaging Protection
Scans and protects IM/chat conversations.
-
- System Change Protection
Helps ensure no unwanted changes happen to your PC and its configuration including:
- startup changes
- browser changes
- shell modifications
- system modifications
-
- Scan Schedules
Lets you set specific times to scan your system automatically.
It's a good idea to scan the system when you're not using your computer.
Commonly this is done in the middle of the night.
-
- Personal Firewall Software
Provides a layer of protection between you and the Internet.
Firewall software is the first layer of defense your PC needs to prevent attackers from gaining access to your computer.
-
- Anti-Phishing
Protects your computer from sites trying to steal personal information.
-
- Spam Filter
Filters out unwanted "junk" emails.
Junk emails are the mail source of online information "phishing" attempts.
-
- Data Theft Prevention
Keeps personal and sensitive data secure on your PC.
-
- Parental Controls
Helps keep kids and families safe online.
Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010 Assessment
Here we've listed a breakdown of each category we've tested for Trend Micro Internet Security 2010. Each category was given a percentage rating based on those tests.
Antivirus Installation: 85%
If you download the software instantly after purchase, the download time takes about 5 min.
Once the download completes, the installation process is easy with no major obstacles.
During the installation, Trend Micro requires you to create an account to continue.
Why? It's an unnecessary step in our opinion.
After the installation is completed, the most current virus definitions will be downloaded automatically. Overall, it's a clean and easy installation experience.
Our total time from download to complete installation was about 15 min.
Trend Micro Internet Security Installation Screenshots
Un-installation: 90%
If you choose to uninstall Trend Micro, it can either be done through the ADD/REMOVE Programs menu in Windows, or through the self-uninstall provided by Trend Micro. You'll be prompted to complete a survey, which makes us cringe, but at least it's optional.
While all of the major registry and program items were cleanly removed, there were a few seemingly harmless references to Trend Micro left behind.
These shouldn't present any problems for your PC and can be ignored but why are they there? That's just sloppy.
The entire uninstall took only about 1 min.
User Interface: 85%
Trend Micro's user interface was easy to use.
All settings pages include a help link that brings up information about each feature. Most settings pages have an advanced button, thus separating the "regular" setting from the advanced.
This is a helpful distinction we wish more antivirus firewall/Internet security suite vendors would mimic.
Trend Micro does not have a splash screen each time you start your computer. That's a nice omission (splash screens can be distracting and often pointless).
The Control Panel has brief, top level descriptions, which expand and collapse when chosen, which keeps the interface nice and clean.
Advanced settings or details open in their own dedicated window, which got mixed reviews here. Some feel this makes it easy to review, examine and change settings between windows; others hate new windows.
All-in-all, it's a decent user interface for an Internet security suite.
Trend Micro Internet Security User Interface Screenshots
Real-time Protection: 55%
We're not very impressed with Trend Micro's real-time antivirus, spyware, and malware protection. At all.
During our testing, Trend Micro's antivirus software took up to five minutes to recognize and deal with known viruses and spyware installers!
Other programs recognize infected files as soon as they're copied to your PC. With Trend Micro we were able to download and run them with no alerts. Then after a few minutes the files were finally seen as a threat.
We thought something had gone amiss with our setup, and actually retried several times to get better results, but each time we rebooted and started from scratch the results were the same.
Amazingly, fully 50% of the virus and spyware installers did not trigger an alert when they were run.
Some spyware required a reboot to be removed, which isn't unusual, but after the reboot there was no notification whether or not the removal had worked.
Among other things, we intentionally ran a malware/adware app which changed the default search to iexplore.exe.
It happily changed with no alert, even though there's a setting in the Trend Micro control panel to protect against this!
KeyLogger detection was under 50% and removal didn't even work most of the time.
On the positive side, harmful files on USB devices were detected immediately on connection. That's at least one good thing.
Overall the alerts were sporadic, sometimes alerting only after a reboot, sometimes after the spyware had been running. No alerts went off about suspicious use of IE or explorer.exe, a common tactic of spyware.
The blocking of potentially harmful websites was good, but it did not prevent the installation or download of files from those sites if the block was circumvented.
Although many harmful sites were blocked, if you wanted to go around the block with a legitimate site or for another reason, it required the disabling of the "Protection Against Web Threats" feature of the software.
There was no way to disable it from the webpage.
(How about a simple override on a site-by-site basis?)
The removal of spyware, and viruses was not nearly as reliable as it should be. Given that only 66% were removed, we have to wonder what year this software is from: 2000 or 2010?
Some spyware even appeared to "break" the scan, as it would never finish, or would seemingly attempt to remove the Trend Micro software altogether.
An unimpressive realtime antivirus protection performance at best.
Manual Scan: 60%
During a manual scan on an infected PC, all spyware and viruses were detected, but 55% of the samples were not removed. And it could get worse.
The items ended up being listed more than once in the quarantine, most likely because they reinstalled themselves.
After the manual scan, we were prompted to reboot the PC to complete the removal. After the reboot there was no indication that Trend Micro was finishing or finished with the removal.
We rebooted and were done. That was it.
The quick scan took only about 10 minutes. The full system scan took about 35 minutes.
Yet another poor performance.
McAfee Internet Security Manual Scan Screenshots
Resource Usage: 70%
During real-time usage, Trend Micro antivirus used about 5.5% of the memory. A little high for our tastes.
During a manual, full-system scan, an average 60% CPU was used, and a far too high 250MB of memory was used during a scan as well causing a very sluggish browsing and usability response time.
Overall, an uneven resource usage which makes for a cumbersome user experience.
Trend Micro Internet Security 2010
Antivirus Scanning Resource Usage
|
| Real-Time Memory |
5.5% |
| Manual Scan Memory |
250MB |
| Manual Scan CPU |
60% |
Note: These are the average results we found during our testing.
Every PC is different, of course, so your results may vary, but we expect these results to be fairly representative.
|
Trend Micro used 5.5% memory during real-time protection.
Trend Micro used 250MB of memory during a manual scan.
Trend Micro used 60% of CPU during a manual scan.
Spyware/Adware Protection: 55%
All spyware and adware was detected, but only 66% was removed. "Huh?" we can hear you saying.
That's what we said, too.
On top of it, we also received error messages from the spyware programs, complaining about missing files from time to time, which is a sign the spyware wasn't completely removed.
Trend Micro really needs to improve their spyware removal system.
Pre-infected Machine: 55%
As we know many of our customers will do, we installed Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010 on to a pre-infected machine to see how it would perform.
Unfortunately, quite literally none of the malicious files were detected during the install, and the removal rate was a mere 66%.
We wish we had better results, but we're only reporting what we saw.
The pre-scan during the Custom Installation didn't download any new definition files before to the scan, which is very important for maximum security.
Regrettably, yet another less-than-good test result for Trend Micro.
Email Protection: 70%
Trend Micro has a toolbar that can be installed on Outlook as an Add-on.
There are settings to check incoming and outgoing mail (either one or both). Strangely, Trend Micro doesn't scan files over 5mb (with no way of overriding this that we saw), so scan time isn't noticeable.
The email filter has the ability to scan the body of emails and look for possibly dangerous links (like viruses, spyware, or adware sites).
Potentially harmful incoming messages are renamed with a .txt or .doc extension then given a warning.
IMAP, the second most widely used email protocol for receiving email, isn't supported.
File quarantine isn't available; the software will only remove the file, which is limited at best.
If a file is incorrectly identified as a virus or malware, there's little you can do short of asking the sender to resend the email to another account.
There was no noticeable difference in speed or resource usage while sending or receiving files.
Anti-spam: 40%
The spam filter was very poor. Even when set to the highest setting, it only caught 1 in 10 known spam emails.
An approved senders list is included (whitelist) as well as a block senders list (blacklist).
Firewall: 60%
Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010
Firewall Scores
|
|
Firewall Performance
|
| Inbound Blocking |
65 |
| Outbound Blocking |
60 |
|
Other Firewall Ratings
|
| Firewall Ease-of-Use |
55 |
| Configuration Flexibility |
60 |
|
During installation the user chooses whether or not to install the firewall.
It automatically disables the Windows firewall and the settings are set to medium by default; however, on the medium setting no programs were identified by the firewall.
In the medium setting, the computer was reachable via ICMP (ping) and unknown programs could send and receive data without so much as a peep.
After seeing no programs blocked at the medium level, we then tested the maximum level and found the maximum setting provided much better protection.
When the antivirus and firewall were both turned on (and set to maximum), the software successfully blocked programs that attempted to make a connection using IE and Windows explorer; however, why are such high settings needed to get what we feel like are standard levels of Internet security protection?
Parental Controls: 75%
The parental control settings allow you to block websites by four different settings: Child, Teen, Mature Teen, and Adult.
There are 28 categories of websites that can be blocked, and you're free to make your own custom setting using any combination of those groups.
The different age settings are different combinations of these categories, and it's possible to make different setting for each Windows user.
You're also allowed to set a password to protect the settings of the entire Trend Micro software itself.
Unfortunately, there's no way to tell what category that a website is in. So, if you choose to block the Adult category, you just have to take their word for it that Adult sites are blocked.
There's an easy to use grid to schedule web access for each Windows user. It appears to work on all browsers, but we couldn't find a list of all supported browsers so there may be ways for clever users to find ways around this.
There is also a data loss prevention item. This allows you to prevent a child or someone else from using your personal information online.
The data Theft Prevent is also available for use as a standalone feature, without enabling the
parental controls
.
Overall, average parental controls. For serious parental control, we recommend a third party software like
WebWatcher for maximum protection.
IM Protection: 75%
The Instant Messaging protection worked well at blocking files that it recognized as a threat.
However, we never received notification that the software blocked anything. The only way we knew if it was (or wasn't) working was the that a file transfer would just fail.
In the case of false positives, i.e. where antivirus software classifies something as a virus that isn't, this could be particularly baffling to a user trying to trying to transfer a file only to have it silently fail.
Anti-phishing: 70%
The Trend Micro anti-phishing feature was poor to average. Anti-phishing is turned on by default, but it only worked about 75% of the time.
Phishing sites that were reported within the last 24 hours were often not detected. Half of these undetected sites were detected by the IE8 Safety Filter, though.
That said, it was cumbersome to go around this filter.
It requires you to disable the web threat category, or to add the site to the approved list. We'd like to see the ability to allow one time access.
It seems that the websites that are blocked are not heuristically found, but are in a database that is updated with new threat definitions. We did find one drive-by install site, and it was not recognized as a dangerous site.
Trend Micro needs to do much better next time with their anti-phishing feature.
Antivirus Definition Updates: 65%
Antivirus (plus anti-spyware) definition updates are available every 3 hours by default, but can be set from 1 to 24 hours apart, in 1 hour intervals.
In today's minute-by-minute threat world, virus definitions need to be updated more quickly, in our opinion, so we recommend you set it to 1 hour.
Customer Support: 80%
Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010
Premium Support Pricing1,2 |
| Service |
Price |
| Virus & Spyware Removal |
$49.95 |
| Security Health Check |
$64.95 |
| Premium Installation |
$49.95 |
1 Pricing current as of the writing of this review and subject to change by the antivirus manufacturer without notice.
2 Premium support is available 24 x 7. |
Knowledgebase and forums are easy to find, but their other support options require you to dig a little deeper. Basic phone support is free for purchasing problems, activation, installation, and usage problems. But tech support beyond basic will be charged according to their Premium Support Pricing structure.
We're always glad to see a good knowledgebase, forums, and free email and chat, but full phone support should be free as well.
Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010
Review Conclusions
|
Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010 Scores
|
|
Antivirus
|
$49.95
|
| Overall Internet Security Protection |
63 |
| Real-time Security Protection |
55 |
| Manual Antivirus Scanning |
60 |
| Resource Utlization |
70 |
| Virus Removal (Pre-infected Machine) |
55 |
| Antivirus Definition Updates |
65 |
|
Additional Internet Security Features
|
| Spyware/Adware Protection |
55 |
| Email Protection |
70 |
| Anti-Spam Protection |
40 |
| Firewall Software |
60 |
| Parental Controls Software |
75 |
| IM/Instant Message Protection |
75 |
| Anti-Phishing Protection |
70 |
|
Other Software Ratings
|
| Installation |
85 |
| Un-installation |
90 |
| User Interface |
85 |
| Customer Technical Support |
80 |
|
Today's virus and malware threats are more real than ever, and in our antivirus firewall software reviews Trend Micro Internet Security 2010 wasn't up to the challenge.
With poor antivirus protection, an average firewall, and poor spyware protection, Trend Micro isn't a good enough option this year.
The little things like a friendly user interface, an easy installation can make the difference between "good" and "great", but the real protection-power of an antivirus or internet security software is what really counts.
- Poor antivirus protection
- Poor spyware and adware protection
- Good user interface
- Average firewall
- Decent IM protection
- Better resource usage
Even though resource usage was good to average, our testing showed poor results in catching known viruses, keyloggers, spyware, trojans, and other malware.
Email and spam protection were less than stellar and their anti-phishing still needs to be beefed-up to protect against real-time threats.
While no antivirus software is ever 100% bullet-proof, Trend Micro falls far below acceptable levels this year.
If you're a loyal Trend Micro user, this Internet Security suite may be enough to suit your needs. But if you're looking for a better option this year, there are plenty.
We highly recommend one of our best
antivirus firewall software options this year instead.
Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010
XP System Requirements
|
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or higher.
Mozilla Firefox 2 or higher
CD-ROM drive (NOT required for installation via the Internet)
|
| Software
|
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
(Service Pack 2)
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
(Service Pack 2)
|
| Processor/CPU
|
Intel Pentium processor 350 MHz or faster
(or compatible)
|
| System Memory/RAM
|
256 MB
|
| Free Disk Space
|
500 MB
|
| Email
|
- Microsoft Outlook 2000
- Microsoft Outlook 2002
- Microsoft Outlook 2003
- Microsoft Outlook 2007
- Microsoft Outlook Express 6 (SP2)
- MSN Hotmail
- Windows Live Mail
- Windows Mail
- AOL Mail
- Google GMail
- Yahoo! Mail (YMail)
- Mozilla Thunderbird
|
| Instant Messaging
|
- AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) 5.9
- ICQ 5.1, 6.0, 6.5
- ICQ Lite
- MSN Messenger 7.5
- Windows Live Messenger 8.0, 8.5, or 9.0
- Yahoo! Messenger 8.1
|
Trend Micro Internet Security Suite 2010
Windows 7 / Vista System Requirements
|
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 or higher.
Mozilla Firefox 2 or higher
CD-ROM drive (NOT required for installation via the Internet)
|
Software
(32/64 bit)
|
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Microsoft Windows Vista Business
Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise
Windows 7
|
| Processor/CPU
|
Intel Pentium processor 800MHz or faster
32 bit (x86)/64 bit (x64)[or compatible]
|
| System Memory/RAM
|
512 MB
|
| Free Disk Space
|
500 MB
|
| Email
|
- Microsoft Outlook 2000
- Microsoft Outlook 2002
- Microsoft Outlook 2003
- Microsoft Outlook 2007
- Microsoft Outlook Express 6 (SP2)
- MSN Hotmail
- Windows Live Mail
- Windows Mail
- AOL Mail
- Google GMail
- Yahoo! Mail (YMail)
- Mozilla Thunderbird
|
| Instant Messaging
|
- AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) 5.9
- ICQ 5.1, 6.0, 6.5
- ICQ Lite
- MSN Messenger 7.5
- Windows Live Messenger 8.0, 8.5, or 9.0
- Yahoo! Messenger 8.1
|
