ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall 2013

The best things in life are free, they say, but not all free things are the best. At PCMag we're big fans of ZoneAlarm's free firewall. The antivirus protection that Check Point added to create ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall 2013 just doesn't come up to the quality of the firewall component. It dilutes this security suite's overall value.

The standalone firewall actually has a placeholder for antivirus protection, a panel that notes "Antivirus is available, but not installed." Clicking the install button transforms your installation of ZoneAlarm Free Firewall 2013 into ZoneAlarm Free Antivirus + Firewall 2013. The other two panels, Firewall and Identity + Data, remain unchanged.

Trouble at the Start
The ZoneAlarm 2013 line has actually been out since late January, and I initially began this review in February. However, my malware removal test revealed an anomaly. ZoneAlarm licenses Kaspersky's antivirus engine, so I expected the test results to either be the same as Kaspersky's or perhaps a little better, given that Kaspersky Anti-Virus (2013) had been tested with the same samples months earlier.

In fact, ZoneAlarm's results were significantly worse than Kaspersky's, and the pattern of missed, removed, and partially-removed samples didn't line up at all with Kaspersky. Check Point's developers discovered a problem with their Kaspersky code, something they called a "bad drop." I had to wait well over a month to continue the review, as they wanted to be extremely sure that everything was working correctly.

Trouble with Installation
Getting Kaspersky PURE 3.0 Total Security installed for testing a few weeks ago wasn't too difficult. I did need to send logs to tech support in some cases, and I called on some of Kaspersky's diagnostic and repair tools. Installing ZoneAlarm was quite a bit tougher, and it felt a bit odd to me that all the diagnostic and repair tools supplied by ZoneAlarm were totally Kaspersky-branded.

ZoneAlarm's installer includes a quick check for active malware. If it finds problems, it launches a round of advanced disinfection before proceeding with installation. It went for advanced disinfection at install on six of the twelve malware-infested systems. Advanced disinfection can also kick in during a full scan; it did so on four of the other six systems. Kaspersky includes a task manager that can juggle multiple scans, automatically restarting a full scan at the point advanced disinfection interrupted it. That's not a feature in ZoneAlarm, so I had to restart the full scan in such cases.

A number of the systems encountered problems that prevented installation or correct operation. Ransomware on one system wouldn't let me install ZoneAlarm (or do anything else); the Kaspersky Rescue Disk solved that one. The Rescue Disk also wiped out malware on another system deleted ZoneAlarm before it could fully install.

One system repeatedly crashed due to partial malware removal. Malware on another system blocked ZoneAlarm's ability to update antivirus definitions. Solving all the install problems required repeated use of Kaspersky's AVZ Antiviral Toolkit and the Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool. The process of getting all the test systems scanned occupied most of a week, but eventually I managed it.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/ePLS_qlo5s4/0,2817,2417326,00.asp

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