Review: Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus 2013

Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus 2013 ($30 for one year, for up to three PCs, as of 12/19/12) is a super speedy security suite and it’ll keep your system relatively safe, but suffers from a cluttered interface and too many advanced settings.

In our real-world attack tests, Webroot completely blocked 96.2 percent of attacks. That’s a good result, but it’s not top-notch. Unfortunately, it let the 3.9 percent of unblocked attacks go completely unblocked (not just partially blocked), which meant that the system got infected 3.9 percent of the time.

Webroot has a decent malware detection rate: It detected 99.9 percent of samples in our malware “zoo” detection test, which exposes an antivirus program to thousands of malware samples discovered within the past four months. In our false positive test, Webroot flagged 14 known safe files as malicious. While this isn’t a bad false positive percentage (the test is out of over 250,000 files), some suites we’ve looked at recently had a perfect false positive rate.

In our system cleanup test, Webroot managed to detect 93.9 percent of infections and disable 81.8 percent of them. It managed to clean up all traces of infection 48.5 percent of the time—a lower-than-average result compared to other suites we’ve looked at recently. Avira Internet Security 2013 cleaned up 50 percent of infections, AVG cleaned up 60 percent, and the other suites cleaned up 70 percent or more.

While Webroot’s protection may not be top-notch, it’s a speedy program with little effect on performance. It added just half a second to startup time (as compared to a PC with no antivirus installed) and three seconds to shutdown time. It had the fastest scan time of all the 2013 suites we tested, for both on-demand scans (58 seconds) and on-access scans (two minutes, 10 seconds).

Installing Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security 2013 is quick and painless. It’s a one-click installation process, and it doesn’t require a reboot. The program does not attempt to install any extras, such as toolbars, nor does it try to change any of your settings.

The Webroot SecureAnywhere user interface is a little tricky to get around. The main screen does show your protection status, as well as statistics such as when the last scan was performed, how long you’ve been protected, and how many system events have been inspected since installation. While this information is interesting, I didn’t find it to be all that useful and it makes the window look a little intimidating and cluttered.

Webroot’s interface is organized into tabs, rather than modules, for each area of security, and there are five of them to choose from: Overview, PC Security, Identity & Privacy, System Tools, and My Account. Under the PC Security tab you’ll find the scan button, as well as firewall and quarantine settings and information.

The settings menu, which you can access via a link in the upper right corner of the window, is a little intimidating, but to its credit, Webroot does warn you that this pane is for advanced users and that basic users need not bother. There are about a thousand different little checkboxes, none of which have any real explanations. An onscreen help button takes you to Webroot’s online help website.

Webroot’s SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus 2013 isn’t a terrible program: it’s lightweight, quick, and okay at protecting your system. However, aside from its impressive speed, it didn’t stand out in any particular area.

Editor’s note: We do not yet have a final rating for this product.