PC Tools Internet Security

PC Tools Internet Security (US$60 for up to three computers for one year as of 5/21/09) offers a decidedly mixed bag of protections. Symantec acquired the security vendor in 2008 to increase its worldwide market share with consumers in new and emerging regional markets. Since the acquisition, PC Tools maintains a separate development operation from Symantec's consumer business unit (responsible for the Norton Internet Security Suite), and its entry in the Internet security suite market comes with strong heuristic malware detection, but it's weaker in other areas such as traditional malware detection.

PC Tools uses its own antivirus protection, and at first glance it appeared to score very well in AV-Test.org's extensive malware-detection tests for both the on-demand and on-access detection of 2735 files, macro viruses, and scripts, scoring nearly 100 percent in each. However, PC Tools is the only security suite to miss at least two variations of the Conficker worm in both on-demand and on-access testing. Against the zoo Trojan horses, worms, password-stealers, and other nasties, PCTools identified on average only 58 percent of the 722,372 collected samples, placing it second to last, just ahead of Comodo.

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