New Matousec Test Results

[Lite]

2011-02-17: New results have been published for:

• Comodo Internet Security 5.3.176757.1236
  
• Look 'n' Stop 2.07
  
• Sunbelt Personal Firewall 4.6.1861.0

Comodo Internet Security confirmed its leadership in Proactive Security Challenge by scoring the perfect 100% score again. Our classification of its host protection features is nothing but Excellent.

Look 'n' Stop and Sunbelt Personal Firewall are on the opposite side of our result table. Neither of these two products passed the level one and both finished with poor 3 % score.

Link

[Tunerz]

No point of including purely firewalls if the tests are made for HIPS.

[Lite]

Thats Matousec for you though :rolleyes:

[elohelomg]

Thats Matousec for you though :rolleyes:

It all comes down to how the computer (or program) is setup. Personally, i use malware defender (business setups) to limit the rights of applications, and all applications aside from re selected are not allowed to execute. I'm sure it'll pass those tests

[portage]

I don't trust Matousec that much and it does mainly come down to how the software is set up. I know that I always change the settings to give it maximum performance.

[RobrPatty]

Comodo is a rock solid firewall.

[grouchysmurf]

Comodo is a rock solid firewall.

Or another opinion, it is a bloated cow.

It seems that once a program becomes solid and stable, the company sells

to someone else, and they decide to change it.

ZA use to be a great firewall too. Then it too became bloatware.

All users are different. This user prefers very small system footprints, very low resource usage,

and a single usage program.

I do not want an all in one suite, those turn into bloatware. McAfee, Symantec, (Norton), seem to

have led the charge in the who can create the biggest bloatware contest and all the other

smaller security companies followed like lemmings.

I thought that I was just picky, but in the last couple of years, I have talked with and read posts from

many, many other geeks across the planet that feel the same way I do.

And in case you are wondering, I have tried ALL the common security programs you can think of,

and most of the not so common ones.

I have a pretty low opinion of all of them. I will tell you that I currently run Avira as my av program, and I have that strictly controlled.

I use Online Armor as my soft fw program, and that is for configuration reasons, (I seem to have the tightest control over this fw).

But, that could change at anytime. I really do not have any good opinions about any of them.

[Bizarre™]

Or another opinion, it is a bloated cow.

Define bloated:

Software bloat is a term used to describe the tendency of newer computer programs to have a larger installation footprint, or have many unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or just generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users.

I believe COMODO has separate installers for Anti-Virus, Firewall, and Internet Security.

[grouchysmurf]

Or another opinion, it is a bloated cow.

Define bloated:

Software bloat is a term used to describe the tendency of newer computer programs to have a larger installation footprint, or have many unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or just generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users.

I believe COMODO has separate installers for Anti-Virus, Firewall, and Internet Security.

The main installer puts hooks in your system for all the above. Bloated defined.

And before you expand on this, I had 2 security technicians examine the reg files

and they found numerous hooks. I had to have them look because it caused mass conflicts with my ALREADY loaded

av software at the time. This was admittedly a few generations ago but it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Hey, like I said, I use to like comodo and za. I am disappointed in that they decided to focus on other things

rather than focus on the good firewalls they had developed. Sometimes more is not better.

Besides, I graduated to hardware fw. I just use the soft for program control.

[Bizarre™]

The main installer puts hooks in your system for all the above. Bloated defined.

You sure have a weird definition of bloated.

And before you expand on this, I had 2 security technicians examine the reg filesand they found numerous hooks.

Ever heard of D+? Of course, it will have hooks. If it doesn't, then it's like saying D+ doesn't do its job.

If you don't like COMODO, then uninstall it. There's no need to bash it. For me, it's a good and free product.

[avmad]

Comodo Firewall runs very light and fast, thats enough for me.

[grouchysmurf]

The main installer puts hooks in your system for all the above. Bloated defined.

You sure have a weird definition of bloated.

And before you expand on this, I had 2 security technicians examine the reg filesand they found numerous hooks.

Ever heard of D+? Of course, it will have hooks. If it doesn't, then it's like saying D+ doesn't do its job.

If you don't like COMODO, then uninstall it. There's no need to bash it. For me, it's a good and free product.

Oh, no bashing intended at all friend.

If it works for you, great. I am all for it.

Everyone has different usages, I guess that is

why there are so many choices.

Again, no bashing was intended. If any was perceived, I apologize

for my poorly written responses. :cheers:

[someone]

No point of including purely firewalls if the tests are made for HIPS.

I Already said that alot of times.

The most funny thing about matousec is: In Methodology they say:

"The products are configured to their highest usable security settings and tested with this configuration only. We define the highest security settings as settings that the user is able to set without advanced knowledge of the operating system. This means that the user, with the skills and knowledge we assume, is able to go through all forms of the graphic user interface of the product and enable or disable or choose among several therein given options, but is not able to think out names of devices, directories, files, registry entries etc. to add to some table of protected objects manually, not even if such a configuration is suggested on the product's support forum or website."

Now how you protect your system with a HIPS if you don't know even directories names? How a Normal user can protect against a registry modification or even distinguish malicious behaviour if they even don't know where they installed the last game?? So if they wanna test that "fix" for a game or prefered software and some prompt appear, they will only hit "Allow" and that's it. It's like give a armoured car for people drive it with the windows open. BUT is just a point of view, and not is important.

Anyway good job of the Comodo Team.

[DKT27]

Just wanted to say that Comodo has improved drastically from 3.14 to 4.x to 5.x now. :)

[anuraag]

• 2011-08-19: New results have been published for:
  • PC Tools Internet Security 2011 8.0.0.655
  • Rising Internet Security 2011 23.00.41.42
  • ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2012 10.0.250.000

  This time PC Tools Internet Security did not confirm its previous excellent results. Because of a single imperfection in its self-protection rule set, its final score jumped down to 90 %. Although this will probably be a trivial problem to fix for its developers, the rules are uncompromising.

  ZoneAlarm Extreme Security is the only product tested this time that performed better than last time. Its today's score is 72 %, quite a lot of space for improvements but still better than most.

  Rising Internet Security fell down to 34 %, the Very poor protection level, far from the leaders.[*]2011-07-22: A single product update:

  • Outpost Security Suite Pro 7.5.1.3791.596.1681
  Outpost Security Suite Pro belongs among the best products we test in Proactive Security Challenge. The new version confirmed the Excellent performance of this security product again. It failed only 4 tests out of 148 tests, which makes 97% score.

[anuraag]

2011-10-06 : New results have been published for:

*. CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2011 7.0.0.279

*. Norton Internet Security 2012 19.1.1.3

*. Privatefirewall 7.0.25.4

It is natural that new versions of the products score higher than the older ones. This time, however, only Privatefirewall and CA Internet Security Suite Plus improved their score.

Norton Internet Security felt down from 40% score to 20 %.Although we see that some new techniques are handled byNorton Internet Security, other techniques that were handled in the 2011 version are not handled anymore.

CA Internet Security Suite Plus went the opposite way. From 12% score it jumped up to 30%, which is still not a good result, but it definitely is a better one and a possible promise for its future versions.

The best product from today's testing is thus the new Privatefirewall. Its score has been improved by 7 % to the Excellent , and close to perfect, 98 %. Good job.

*. 2011-08-27 : A single product update:

*. BitDefender Internet Security 2011 14.0.30.357

BitDefender Internet Security has been improved again. Its new 97% score suggests that there are not many tests that can bypass its protection. Although its overall protection has been improved, some of the problems with its application behavior control module, which we identified last time, were not mitigated. Many alerts displayed by BitDefender Internet Security still lack important information that would help users to make correct decisions. More information can be found in the final report.

[Kojootti]

Thanks for the update Anu..

I think I may give PrivateFirewall a shot..

I wonder why don't they test Emsisoftware's Online Armor ;)

would be in top 3 for sure.

[anuraag]

Thanks for the update Anu..

I think I may give PrivateFirewall a shot..

I wonder why don't they test Emsisoftware's Online Armor ;)

would be in top 3 for sure.

its all about $. Emsi don't want to give much $ to matousec.

Have you read this

http://www.anti-malware.ru/firewall_test_outbound_protection_2011