Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010

Webroot Internet Security Essentials falls short on new-threat detection

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Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 is in essence Webroot's SpySweeper antivirus/antispyware application packaged with a firewall, an antispam utility, backup software, and internet browsing protection thrown in.

Pros

  • Good system disinfection rates

Cons

  • Light on features considering its price, low blocking rate of new threats

Bottom Line

Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 provides built-in backups, but it's light on features otherwise and has trouble detecting new threats.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 69.95 (AUD)

While that may satisfy fans of SpySweeper, it may not be enough for everyone else. Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 lacks the parental control features that are common in other internet suites, and it falls well short when detecting and disinfecting brand-new malware threats.

Although the Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 interface is serviceable, it needs some improvement. Webroot uses a three-column layout, with navigation on the left, configuration options in the middle, and technical details on the far side. We found the interface to be cryptic and unintuitive at times.

Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 detected and disabled all active malware infections on our test PC, and it removed all traces of 60 percent of the samples (which sounds low, but was actually above average among the suites we tested). Webroot detected 93 percent of inactive rootkits (stealth malware that is used to hide other malware infections) and all active rootkits, although it left some behind, removing only 87 percent of rootkit samples.

The Webroot suite struggles to stop brand-new malware outbreaks. Although it detected all samples in our behavioural-analysis tests (which involve detecting malware based solely on how it acts), Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 blocked only 27 percent of the samples, and fell even further behind by completely removing a mere 13 percent of the samples.

This is an important test of how well a suite will be able to detect new, unknown malware outbreaks; Given how quickly malware advances, Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010's low scores in this test indicate it may not do a good job of protecting you from zero-day exploits.

That said, Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 did reasonably well at detecting malware using traditional signature-based detection, finding 96.2 percent of samples. However, signature-based detection is not as important as it once was, with proactive detection measures becoming more vital.

Webroot Internet Security Essentials 2010 generally had a low impact on system performance, although bootup time (48.4 seconds) was a little on the slow side compared with the average of all suites that we tested. However, on two performance tests (repeatedly copying a file and creating a file) Webroot took longer to complete the task than virtually any other suite in our roundup. Webroot's scan speeds were on the slow side too: it scanned 4.5GB of data in 5 minutes, 34 seconds in our on-access scan test that helps judge how well a product can scan files for malware when they are opened or saved to disk.

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