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A previous version of Trend Micro's PC-cillin Internet Security Suite earned PC World's Best Buy distinction in June 2004's "Bigger Threats, Better Defense" security roundup. This time around, however, disappointing performance scores outweighed superior interface design to drag this product's overall rank to ninth out of the ten antivirus products tested for "The New Virus Fighters."
Nevertheless, the interface was the best of the bunch. Clicking the clearly labeled icons on the left panel of the interface opens screens that allow users to configure and customize the software. What sets this version of PC-cillin apart from other antivirus products is its informative labeling of settings and features, and the extensive collection of configuration options.
In a few of our performance tests, PC-cillin performed poorly. For example, it came in dead last in our malware detection tests of backdoor programs, bots, and Trojans. Trend Micro says that the malware samples in our zoo are not indicative of real-world threats, so it has not spent resources developing signature files for these malware samples.
The product also came in last in our heuristics tests. While some competitors were able to detect more than 50 percent of backdoors and worms using one-month-old virus data, Trend Micro managed to catch only 6 percent. Trend Micro says that heuristics cause false positives and that the damage these false positives can cause outweighs the potential benefits of the heuristics. As a result, Trend Micro chooses not to focus on developing heuristics.
Upshot: PC-cillin Internet Security Suite 2006 has a superior user interface, but its has poor heuristics performance is poor and its ability to detect threats other than easily identifiable ones is limited.
Tony Bradley
