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CNET editors' rating:
2.5 stars
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Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 1.0 stars out of 43 reviews
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Product summary
The good: CA Internet Security Suite 2007 includes a personal firewall and antivirus, antispyware, and antispam protection; runs under Windows 98 through Windows Vista; supports up to three PCs under one license.
The bad: CA Internet Security Suite 2007 does not include antiphishing and antirootkit protection; parental controls are a separate utility; too many open windows on the desktop; status reports are easily spoofed into displaying Protected after incomplete antivirus and antispyware scans.
The bottom line: CA Internet Security Suite 2007 feels like a pasted-together trial version of what CA offers in terms of consumer protection. The suite fails to integrate and lacks antiphishing, antirootkit, and basic IM protection found elsewhere.
Specifications: License qty: 1 user; License type: Complete package; Min processor type: 300 MHz Intel Pentium; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 03/02/2007
- Released on: 08/01/2006
CA, formerly Computer Associates, redesigned its product line for 2007 and repackaged its Internet security suite as CA Internet Security Security 2007. It provides antivirus, antispyware, antispam, and personal firewall protection, but there are many omissions, such as antiphsihing and antirootkit protection. Online parental controls are available from an optional download.
Despite a clever advertising gimmick promising up to $6,500 in total Internet protection, $5,000 in identity-theft protection, and $1,500 in antivirus protection (see the CA site for all the disclaimers and the very fine print), we're not convinced CA Internet Security is the best protection on the market today. We found it too easy to get the protection status screen to display "Protected" after aborting our antivirus and antispyware scans. We still recommend ZoneAlarm Internet Security 7 for the best all-around protection.
Installation and setup
We downloaded and installed CA Internet Security 2007 in a matter of minutes, but there are a few gotchas along the way. First, you must accept the CA end user license agreement, then a Lesser General Public License agreement for two open-source libraries; failure to accept one or both will not allow you to continue. In order to qualify for the advertised insurance guarantees from CA, you must also submit a detailed registration form to both CA and Mobile Lifeline, which handles the security insurance, requests an e-mail address as well as a physical address.
For $69.99, CA allows you to install the product on up to three PCs. CA Internet Security runs on Windows 98 through XP, requires 60MB to install and 256MB of RAM to run. Parental Controls, which is a separate feature, requires an additional 25MB of hard drive space to install and only runs on Windows 2000 and XP.
The new interface is more a table of contents, giving you updated status reports on four areas: antivirus, antispyware, firewall, and antispam. If you purchase any of the individual products, you'll realize that CA Internet Security 2007 has slapped an overview window on top of, say, the CA Antivirus application. By clicking individual topics, you are taken to a new window with more specifics about the topic selected. This seems very old school--even McAfee has updated its interface to contain all activities within one window--and shows that the security tools are not integrated well. The downsides are that the suite as a whole takes up more system resources and that you have several open windows on your desktop.
As with Trend Micro Internet Security 2007, we had too much trouble engaging the CA Personal Firewall out of the box. We could not update the product because we could not connect to the Internet; we needed to reboot first. Only then did CA recognize that our laptop was connected to a new network and asked us to declare this network as safe or not. This should have happened upon installation. Once we marked our network as safe, we were able to update our program.
Should you want to remove CA Internet Security 2007, CA does not provide an uninstall icon. Using the Windows Control Panel Add or Remove Programs tool, you have to remove only one product (assuming all the check boxes are marked). Oddly, during uninstall, CA denied Firefox access to the Internet; only after telling it to allow Firefox did the uninstall process complete. After a reboot, we found that CA left behind no traces.
Features
Of all the Internet security suites we installed and tested, CA Internet Security 2007 took the longest to get rid of the Attention Needed flags on the overview page. Unfortunately, we found that we could cheat the process by canceling our antivirus and antispyware scans prematurely. And we found many security protections to be missing.
- See more CNET content tagged:
- Computer Associates International Inc.,
- anti-spyware,
- Internet security,
- antivirus,
- protection
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