ZoneAlarm Internet Security Reviewer's Comments

ZoneAlarm has been known for their firewall and spyware prevention products, but what happens when you add the Kaspersky virus scanning engine to their products and smash it all together? You get one of the most exciting PC security software releases in recent memory and “TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award” winning program- ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2008.

Offering a plethora of high-level features such as virus protection, spyware protection, email protection, privacy and identity protection, IM security and parental controls, ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite is a wall of protection that is hard to beat.

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Firewall:  

ZoneAlarm Firewall has been the standard for personal firewall products since early this decade. They continued this rich tradition and made it even better with ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2008. Their configuration utility is easy to use and has a learning feature that takes the guess work out of configuring your firewall.

During our testing, the ZoneAlarm firewall caught everything we threw at it including blocking some port scans that were designed to detect and attack stealthed ports. Impressive doesn't begin to describe the ZoneAlarm firewall when compared against many of the other firewalls in the security suite roundup.

Antivirus:  

Until recently, ZoneAlarm was using an older version of CA's antivirus engine. Included in the new release however, ZoneAlarm includes the Kaspersky antivirus scanning engine. This is a significant upgrade and propels ZoneAlarm into the forefront of security suite technologies. With fast scan times, integrated spyware protection and a host of other features, ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2008 has become one of the applications to beat in the Internet security suite market.

Antispyware:  

ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2008 includes a host of antispyware features including the OSFirewall feature and a deep scanner included in the virus scanner. OSFirewall is a feature that detects and destroys spyware while it tries to install itself. This covers everything from trojan horses to rootkits and offers an extra level of security that many other suites don't have.

Other Security/Features:  

ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2008 has many extra features including powerful parental controls and the myVAULT feature to keep your password and financial data safe. Along with all of these, ZoneAlarm includes IM security that works with all the major IM clients such as MSN Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger as well as some of the more obscure clients like Pidgin and Miranda IM.

ZoneAlarm Internet Security also includes popup blockers, ad blockers and flash ad blockers to help streamline your Internet browsing experience. This is also useful when there are children using the Internet that may not know exactly what they are clicking all the time.

Ease of Use:  

ZoneAlarm Internet Security 2008 is easy to use and requires almost no intervention to get protected and stay protected. The configuration wizard that runs during installation is easy to understand and doesn't require much time to complete. The menus within the program are well labeled and easy to navigate.

Ease of Installation/Setup:  

ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite has an easy and intuitive installer than walks you through everything from installing the program to the initial configuration.

Help/Support:  

ZoneAlarm Internet Security has great support documentation included with it as well as being available online. User forums are also available along with email support. They have a walk through help feature they call Instant Help that is also usefull. Phone support is offered for a pretty large fee, but their online help is more than sufficient for most problems you may have. We do feel that offering more support options would increase the value of this product and lowering or even removing the cost of phone support would make this product the best available on the market.

Summary:  

ZoneAlarm Internet Security is one of the most well rounded and effective security suites on the market. Using the award winning ZoneAlarm firewall and including the Kaspersky virus scanning engine, great parental control features and anti spyware features that are among the best in the industry, ZoneAlarm hits an all time high.