F-Secure Internet Security 2014 review: bulletproof protection, bad user interface

Looking for ironclad protection? F-Secure Internet Security 2014 ($80 for the “lifetime” of your PC—up to seven years) is bulletproof, ranking among the best performers in AV-Test’s protection assessments. But its interface is another story: If you don’t think user-friendliness matters, wait until you see this suite.

Along with Eset Smart Security 7, Kaspersky Internet Security 2014, Norton Internet Security 2014, and Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2014, F-Secure Internet Security 2014 offers the best protection of the ten security suites we tested. It protected our test systems from 100 percent of real-world (unknown, zero-day) malware attacks, including web and email threats, and it also shielded systems from 100 percent of widespread known malware attacks. F-Secure isn’t invincible—even Superman has a weakness—but it’s pretty darn close.

In usability tests, F-Secure identified five legitimate programs as threats during a routine system scan. That put it in a tie with Vipre Internet Security 2014 and Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete for the most false-positive flags in our roundup.

In AV-Test’s performance tests, F-Secure scored a 2, meaning that it imposed less strain on system resources than all but one of the other most effective malware-blocking suites, that one being Kaspersky Internet Security 2014.

No touchscreen-friendly tiles on this settings menu.

Installing F-Secure is arduous, with a few screens stretched across a long process. The first screen is a license and user agreement (no other suite has this). The second screen walks you through downloading the rest of the installer, which can take awhile if you have a slow connection. A third screen asks whether you want to participate in F-Secure’s real-time reporting program, and the fourth screen commences the actual installation process. F-Secure detects conflicting programs, such as rival security suites, and requests that you uninstall them before proceeding. And you’ll have to reboot your computer before the installation is complete.

Instead of using a big, touchscreen-optimized window, F-Secure opts for a small, unobtrusive launch pad that hangs out at the bottom of your screen. The launch pad has five buttons, for Computer Security, Online Safety, Safe Profile, Search, and F-Secure. Clicking Computer Security opens a window that’s closer to what you see in other suites: It provides a picture of a computer with a green checkmark (if you’re protected) or a red ‘x’ (if you’re not), and quick links to scan and settings. The window also includes tabs for tools (advanced scan, firewall settings, quarantined files) and statistics.

The settings menus are not designed for amateurs—they're full of checkboxes with little accompanying explanation. Each icon from the launch pad has its own settings menu, except ‘Safe Profile’ and ‘Search’, which are browser-based options.

We should also underscore F-Secure’s unique approach to pricing: Whereas most of the nine other suites in our security roundup charge between $40 and $80 for a single year of protection but offer coverage for between one and three systems, F-Secure charges $80 to cover only one PC—but its coverage lasts for seven years (only Vipre, which charges $50 for two years of coverage for a single system offers more than a one-year term of coverage). Its pricing structure makes F-Secure a real bargain if you have just one PC to protect.

F-Secure Internet Security 2014 may offer top-notch protection, but so do several other suites in our roundup. Unfortunately, the program’s antiquated interface mars an otherwise great product.

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

F-Secure Key review: An excessively simple password manager for absolute beginners

You too need a password manager, and if you're not yet using one, you should. A good password manager makes it simple to securely store your most important information, and access it whenever and wherever you need it. An excellent password manager is both easy to use and secure, with smart cross-platform features that streamline your password usage without compromising your safety. KeePass does this, LastPass does this, and so does Dashlane. The new F-Secure Key's challenge is to do it better.

F-Secure Key (free for basic version, $16/year for Premium) is a new password manager by security company F-Secure. The free PC edition of F-Secure Key—editions for Android, iPhone, and Mac exist as well—is a local one with no online synchronization. The interface is clean and simple, and creating new password entries is intuitive. Importing a database from another manager is also easy enough, providing you know how to export an XML file from your old manager. Similar to other password managers, F-Secure uses the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256) algorithm for its password encryption.

With its icons and colors, F-Secure Key is much nicer to look at than most password managers.

Each F-Secure Key entry can get one of several dozens of icons, as well as a color code. The password generator can help you with secure passwords of up to 32 characters, using any combination of letters, numbers and symbols. It is, however, limited when compared to other managers. The entire interface, complete with cute little icons and color codes, is visually pleasing, but unfortunately, there's no way to use these icons or colors to your advantage. Your password list is searchable by keyword, but you can't filter out a color or a certain icon. There are no password groups or categories, and no way to sort the list or otherwise filter certain types of passwords from the mass.

The password generator is effective, but lacks fine-tuned control over the final result.

When it comes to more advanced features, F-Secure Key lacks them almost completely. There's no way to control the app's auto-locking or clipboard cleaning features; the auto-login feature is very limited, and the hotkeys that do exist are hidden in the help files and are inconvenient to use; there's no indication of how secure your chosen passwords are; and unlike competitors such as Dashlane, there's no option to automatically create entries when logging into new websites. F-Secure's cross-device synchronization is a premium feature which feels secure enough, but is also a bit confusing to set up.

When logging in to a website, you can choose the relevant password from a dropdown menu.

On the upside, F-Secure Key does come from a good home. Backed by a serious security lab, F-Secure Key comes with a nice built-in news feed with updates about recent hacks and passwords thefts. While this feature is not unique to F-Secure Key, it feels good to know the data is obtained in-house.

F-Secure Key is an extremely simple password manager, and one that even the less tech-savvy can learn how to use. It does, however, lack in useful features, which renders it useless for more advanced users. F-Secure Key is a definite step up from a password notebook sitting on your desk, but aside from this secure simplicity, it doesn't offer anything its competitors don't already do better. If you're already using a different password manager such as Lastpass, KeePass or Dashlane, stick with it.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: F-Secure Internet Security 2013: First-rate protection and usability has a small performance price

Sarah is a freelance writer and editor based in Silicon Valley. She has a love/hate relationship with social media and a bad habit of describing technology as "sexy."
More by Sarah Jacobsson Purewal

F-Secure Internet Security 2013 (about $73 for one year and one computer, as of 12/19/12) came in first in several of our malware detection, blocking, and removal tests. It successfully blocked attacks, detected and disabled infections, and proved adept at cleaning up all traces of malware, landing at the top of this year’s security suite roundup.

In our real-world attack test, F-Secure completely blocked 100 percent of attacks. This test indicates how well the product will successfully block new malware attacks as it encounters them in the wild. But F-Secure wasn’t unique: Of the nine security suites we tested, four others also managed to completely block all attacks: Bitdefender, G Data, Norton, and Trend Micro.

F-Secure also put up great scores in our malware-zoo detection test: The suite detected 99 percent of known malware samples. This score puts it in the top five of the security suites we tested, though it’s at the bottom of that group (G Data, McAfee, Norton, and Trend Micro all posted detection rates of 99.7 percent or higher). F-Secure flagged just two safe files (out of over 250,000) as malicious, which is a good false-positive rate overall. However, since four of the suites achieved a perfect score in false-positive testing, and two suites flagged only one safe file as malicious, on this measure F-Secure still ends up in the bottom half of the list.

In our system cleanup test, F-Secure performed very well. In fact, it’s at the top of the list (alongside Bitdefender) after detecting and disabling all infections on our test PC and completely removing 90 percent of infections. So F-Secure should effectively dispatch any malware it finds on your machine.

While F-Secure does an excellent job of detecting, disabling, blocking, and cleaning up malware, all of this power comes at a price (a small one, to be sure): F-Secure added 6 seconds to startup time (compared to a system with no antivirus software installed)—the worst showing out of all of the suites we tested. It also added 5 seconds to shutdown time. F-Secure performed well in the rest of our PC speed tests overall, but it significantly slowed application installation.

Scanning speeds were better, though. F-Secure took second place in both on-demand (manual) scan tests (1 minute, 16 seconds) and on-access (automatic) scans (3 minutes, 50 seconds). Both results are better than average by a healthy margin.

The suite installs quickly and easily, with just four screens to click through and no restart required. It doesn’t install any extras (such as a toolbar), nor does it change any of your default settings. It does install a launcher, which is what you open when you double-click the program’s system tray icon. The launcher has three buttons to take you to different program screens: a computer-security screen, an online-safety screen, and a third for F-Secure’s website.

F-Secure’s user interface is sleek and easy to understand. It presents a large round checkmark (or X mark) that shows your protection status, as well as three modules for checking your security status, F-Secure’s extra tools and features, and statistics and reports. Below these modules is a scan button, an update button, and a settings button. The settings are fairly easy to get around, and each screen has a quick explanation of what the feature does and how it works.

With excellent protection and a user-friendly interface, F-Secure is definitely worth a look. This security package adds a little extra weight to your system, but if you can get past those performance issues, it’s a great program.

From PC World. Shop computer and accessories from Amazon here

F-Secure Internet Security 2012 Review: A Slow but Decent Malware Fighter

If you can tolerate some sluggishness, F-Secure Internet Security 2012 ($60 for one year and three PCs as of January 25, 2012), which placed eighth in our 2012 roundup of security suites, will protect your PC pretty well.

F-Secure's suite put up decent all-around scores for malware detection, though it fell somewhat short of the top contenders. With a 96.2 percent blocking rate in our real-world tests (which indicate how well a suite can stop brand-new, as-yet-unknown malware), it’s generally on a par with its competition. Its 99.91 percent detection rate for known malware is also very good. The F-Secure package found and removed all test infections on our system, and it cleaned all malware traces 60 percent of the time (which is just about average compared with the other products we tested).

It did report four false positives; that’s a tiny percentage given our sample size, but several of its rivals had one or zero false positives.

The F-Secure software’s impact on PC performance was fairly low for the most part, though it wasn't the fastest suite we've seen. The 15 seconds it added to PC shutdown times (as compared to our test PC with no antivirus software installed) was among the worst results we saw on that test; it also faired poorly in our app-installation test, completing the task in 3 minutes, 12 seconds. That outcome was a good 22 seconds slower than the average time for the suites we evaluated, and only 3 of the 14 suites we looked at had a larger impact on performance in this test.

Scan speeds were pedestrian: In our on-demand scan test (which indicates how quickly a suite will run a manually initiated scan of 4.5GB of data), the F-Secure software took 2 minutes, 43 seconds, the second-worst result on this measure. In our testing of the on-access scanner--which runs when you open or save a file to disk--it required 4 minutes, 21 seconds to plow through the same 4.5GB of files, landing at the middle of the pack.

Overall I appreciated F-Secure’s basically easy-to-use interface. The installer was fairly straightforward, though it did require me to click through more screens than I would have liked. F-Secure's main interface is based on the Launch Pad, a small window that you use to access the Internet-security and PC-security settings windows--the two feature sets are organized separately from each other. I wasn't crazy about this arrangement, since it merely added another screen that I had to pass through to get where I was going; I don't see why F-Secure can't combine the two categories into a single control panel.

Although the panels for the Internet-security and PC-security sections are laid out nicely, they're almost identical, so it's easy to get them crossed up. When you delve into the settings, you'll find that the interface is clean, but some features could use better descriptions. For example, you must go into the help system to learn what DeepGuard is (it monitors how programs behave, as well as the contents of files, to identify malware).

All things considered, F-Secure Internet Security 2012 is a good product. It'll do an effective job. This year's competition is stiff, however, and F-Secure doesn't quite keep up with the leaders of the pack.

From PCWorld. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center here