G Data InternetSecurity 2013 Review: Excellent protection, but a terrible user interface

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."
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G Data InternetSecurity 2013 ($35 for one year, as of 12/19/12) is a comprehensive security suite with an excellent protection record: It blocked, detected, and disabled all of the malicious files we threw at it, and cleaned up 80 percent of infections in our system cleanup test. However, it’s not the most user-friendly suite, with a tedious installation process and an advanced-users-only settings panel. As a result, it ended up toward the bottom of our rankings.

In our real-world attack test, G Data completely blocked 100 percent of attacks. This indicates how well the product will successfully block brand new malware attacks when it encounters them in the wild. Of the nine security suites we tested, five completely blocked all attacks: G Data, F-Secure, Bitdefender, Norton, and Trend Micro.

G Data also has an excellent malware detection rate. In our malware-zoo detection test, the program detected 99.7 percent of known malware samples. This detection rate puts G Data in fourth place for malware detection. G Data did have a higher false positive percentage than other security suites—it flagged three safe files (out of over 250,000) as malicious. Although this is a very low false positive rate, seven of the suites we tested flagged fewer than two safe files as malicious.

In our system cleanup test, G Data detected and disabled 100 percent of infections. It also managed to completely clean up 80 percent of infections, which puts it in third place (alongside Kaspersky and Trend Micro). This test shows how well a product can find, disable, and remove every last trace of an infection, so you can rest assured that G Data will do a respectable job.

G Data is one of the lightest security suites we tested this year. It adds practically nothing to startup time (compared to a PC with no antivirus installed), though it adds about 5.5 seconds to shutdown time. G Data’s scan times aren’t quite as good—it takes one minute and 56 seconds to complete an on-demand (manual) scan, which is the second-worst time of the tested suites. It also takes six minutes and two seconds to complete an on-access scan, which puts it in third-to-last place.

G Data’s installation process is, simply put, annoying. It has ten screens to click through, several of which require user input, such as choosing services and registering for a G Data account. The program automatically changes your screensaver, although it does offer up a one-click option to change it back. This seems over-the-top, considering a screensaver is not in any way associated with antivirus protection. G Data does not have a toolbar.

The suite's interface isn’t very attractive, nor is it very usable. At the top of the main window sits a large banner that displays your security status. Underneath this are separate modules for different areas of protection, including virus protection, Web protection, spam protection, and the firewall. The modules’ titles are clickable, and when you click on them you’ll get a drop-down menu that relates to that module, with quick links to different types of scans and settings.

Here’s where it gets difficult: The settings menu in G Data isn’t quite as intimidating as Avira’s settings menu, but it’s also not designed for beginners. The nested menus seem simple enough, but aside from the general settings menu (which lets you optimize settings for a standard computer, a slow computer, or a user-defined type of computer), everything is confusing. There are no simple explanations for different features and settings—instead, there is just a help button that takes you to a comprehensive online help manual.

Overall, G Data InternetSecurity 2013 is an effective antimalware suite that will keep you protected from almost all new threats. However, it suffers from a confusing, overly complicated user interface and settings panel, both of which seem to be designed more for advanced users than less experienced ones.

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G Data InternetSecurity 2012 Review: Top-Notch Antimalware Protection

Our top pick in our 2012 roundup of Internet security suites is G Data InternetSecurity 2012 ($35 for a one-year, single-PC license as of January 25, 2012). Although its interface isn't terribly friendly to beginners, G Data's suite put up some of the best malware detection and blocking scores in the history of our testing.

G Data InternetSecurity blocked all samples in our real-world tests (which assess how well security software can stop previously unknown threats). It also spotted all but five samples in our “zoo” of 108,869 samples of known malware--the best score we’ve ever seen on this particular test.

In addition, G Data's package had a low false-positive rate, labeling only one known safe file out of a pool of more than 250,000 as possibly dangerous; you don't have to worry about it flagging a good file as bad. It rendered all infections on our test PC inert, and it removed all traces of malware 60 percent of the time.

This suite's impact on PC performance was fairly minimal overall, but it did struggle in a few areas. It finished our on-demand scan test (which measures how quickly a suite can scan 4.5GB of files when you tell it to do so) in an above-average 1 minute, 49 seconds, but its on-access scanner (which kicks in when you open or save files) processed 4.5GB of data in a slow 6 minutes, 41 seconds. By comparison, on average the products we tested completed those tests in 1 minute, 59 seconds and 4 minutes, 48 seconds, respectively.

The G Data suite added less than half of a second to startup and shutdown times as compared to a PC with no antivirus software installed--in both cases, the best result among the products we tested. It also produced a good result in our download test, adding only about 1.5 seconds compared to our test PC without antivirus installed. On the other hand, it slowed our test PC considerably when we loaded Web pages, installed software, or copied files over the network.

G Data's interface isn’t too impressive. Its installer is fairly painless, but it forces you to click through a number of screens and requires you to restart the PC before you can use the software. The main screen isn't significantly different from that of last year's G Data suite, which isn't a good thing. Reaching some commonly used features via the main control panel is difficult, since they’re often hidden in menus. And unless you’re an expert, the settings can be confusing--there are just so many of them. That said, the clearly labeled 'Correct' button that appears when a problem occurs lets you quickly and easily fix any issues that prevent you from being fully protected.

This isn't a perfect security suite, but the package excels where it counts most: stopping malware. If you can put up with some interface annoyances and sluggish scan speeds, G Data InternetSecurity 2012 is definitely a top-notch contender and worth your consideration.

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