Kaspersky Internet Security Review

Antivirus protection for all your computers is a must, especially with the rise of ransomware, but antivirus is not all you need. A comprehensive security suite offers protection on many other levels. Kaspersky Internet Security uses award-winning antivirus and adds firewalls, spam filters, parental controls, VPN, and more. And all of these security components do their jobs well.

The large main program window has a large status banner at the top. If there is a configuration problem, please provide a link to fix it. Otherwise, there may still be recommendations. There are six big buttons called "Scan", "Database Update", "Safe Money", "Privacy", "Parental Control" and "My Kaspersky". Beneath is a button to open a menu with additional tools and a gear symbol at the bottom left to open the settings.

This suite overlaps most of the security features of Kaspersky Security Cloud Free, although the free product is modeled on Kaspersky Security Cloud, not on this suite or on commercial Kaspersky Anti-Virus software.

In the past, Kaspersky reserved the behavior detection component of System Watcher for paid products. With the 2019 edition, however, this feature has become a free antivirus. I tried this feature and found that all my encrypted ransomware samples were captured even when the usual real-time protection was disabled.

Kaspersky's anti-virus web component has been shown to be better at detecting phishing scams than marking host URLs for malware. In my hands-on antiphishing test, 100% detection was done with McAee with the highest rating. Bitdefender was not far behind with a 99% detection rate. It should be noted that the macOS equivalents of these three products achieved exactly the same results.

All Kaspersky security products come with a free and limited edition of Kaspersky Secure Connection VPN bandwidth. With the AnchorFree Hotspot Shield Elite compatible VPN, you can use 200MB of bandwidth per day on any device. Bitdefender has a very similar offering, which is also compatible with AnchorFree. Additional features include an on-screen keyboard to avoid keyloggers and a marking system to mark dangerous links in search results.

Click More Tools to display additional tool pages, many of which are not available to Free Edition users. Tools that don't require a premium purchase include a paper shredder, a rescue disc, and various tools to clean and optimize your PC.

A great advantage when you pay for Kaspersky Anti-Virus is that you get extensive technical support by phone or live chat. Users of the free edition should rely on FAQs and forums.

Hackers discover vulnerabilities and security companies fix them. If you don't apply the solutions, big problems can arise. The vulnerability scan reports missing patches for Windows and popular apps. Configuration parameters that are bad for security are also marked, with the option to automatically correct them.

If you access a bank website or other confidential website, Kaspersky suggests that you open that website in the browser protected by Safe Money. Once you have accepted this offer, this site will still be open in the default protected browser.