India Broadband Forum

itsmemad

Review:
Kaspersky is one of the best anti-viruses we have had since last few years... Its latest version Kaspersky 2009 also tries to follow that tradition... Here are some of the features and changes which I personally noticed in my 2 weeks of use so far...

Better Interface- Earlier Kaspersky was known for its geeky interface... which was little hard to use for novices... But was a pleasure for advanced users... simply cuz its main objective was to provide the user to control as much of system activity as possible... Kaspersky's 2009 interface changes that objective to user-friendliness... It has a simple interface with a button which changes color to green with a message "Your Computer is Protected" when everything is normal... it is yellow when low-risk malware such as adware is found... and is red with a message "Your computer is at risk - Fix it!" when a threat is found... Just one click on the button and Kaspersky does it all in few seconds to turn green...

Integrated Firewall - Kaspersky 2009 removes the need to install a dedicated firewall like comodo and zonealarm... and thus removes the conflicts which users used to face when its own firewall conflicted with any dedicated firewall in previous versions... Now Kaspersky gives a neat message like - "Installation can't continue. Remove comodo firewall"... Thus making it sure that no firewall(except windows) is there to raise an issue...

Behavior Analysis - One of the major changes Kaspersky 2009 has done is to introduce this new technique which constantly monitors all the activities going on in the system... and tries to interpret it and report if its found suspicious even if the file isn't affected by any known virus signatures... Thus enabling the A.I. of the Anti-virus to take decision on itself...

Fast Scans - 1st full system scan took 2 hours... Next full system scan took 2 minutes... Actually Kaspersky 2009 has introduced a new dynamic feature... Its capable of logging when files were last accessed, and if a clean file hasn’t been used since the last scan, Kaspersky skips it... This has made scans much faster than they used to be and thus easy on system resources...

Security Analyzer - This tool is used for diagnosis of applications and troubleshooting them... and reports if the windows & other applications installed needs a patch/update... It also detects the defects in windows settings and browsers and tries to correct them...

Virus detection - Its among the best!

Updates - It provides hourly updates which is so important in the cyber world at the moment...

Customized installation:(just a suggestion)

I really don't b'lieve that any product can be master of all trades... so, I never rely on a single product to perform all the tasks... It helps to maintain security and performance of windows at optimum level.

While installing Kaspersky 2009, choose custom setup... and then deselect Anti-Malware and Online Security... For anti-malware use any specialized anti-spyware... Online Security is nothing but anti-phishing... Anti-Phishing capabilities of updated Internet Explorer (7 or 8) and Firefox (3.0.X) are more than enough...

P.S. - If you have any query regarding Kaspersky 2009 plz feel free to post here... If you have used it, you can post ur positive or negative comments about it here... Last but not the least... I'll really appreciate ur comments and rep points for this thread!

Evander Leopold

Mads Mikkelsen, if u are using kav09 parsonally, i want u to do a test for me.

http://www.grc.com/ ->services->shieldsup

go to this site and select "all service ports" to test kav09 firewall's strength. Since I use BitDefender2008 , I would like u to find it out for me. Let me know the results.

by the way, its a quite good entry.

Archer

Nice review.
I use Avast freeware for Antivirus & Zone Alarm for Firewall. Kaspersky sounds good. But I have doubts in the in-buit Firewalls capabilities.

newprouser

@ itsmemad

Tell me if you know any way to update KAV 2009 offline, as i understand the definitions available for d/l @ kaspersky site can be used only upto KAV v7

And what mentioned about using different products for different types of malware is very true. There's no single product that can excel at everything.

On a personal note, I like kaspersky anti-virus too, but it displays a warning if its not able update itself every 4 hrs or so, and it annoys me the core.

I've been happy norton for more than 7 years and it has never let me down

Preeti_20

Wow Itsmemad, really good post. Its informative and something useful!

Archer

@ newprouser

Check these two links.

• Kaspersky Offline Updates

• Kaspersky Update Settings Change

First link is to get update files. And second link to know how to configure Kaspersky to use local file to update.

I am a happy Avast user.

itsmemad

I would love to do that test... but that site isn't loading at my browsers...
Thanks for the nick and appreciation... but I'm no Mads Mikkelsen..

I was using Comodo... It was a heart-break for me to uninstall it to use Kaspersky 2009... Even I'm a bit apprehensive about any anti-virus's firewall... So far it hasn't let me down...

Archer

Thanks for the link Leo.

I tested Zone Alarm in it. This is the result I got.

Quote:

Results from scan of ports: 0-1055 0 Ports Open 0 Ports Closed 1056 Ports Stealth --------------------- 1056 Ports Tested ALL PORTS tested were found to be: STEALTH.

itsmemad

I've not yet searched about offline update thing... And the links provided by Archer confirms that what u r saying is right! I'll post about it if I find something about it...

I've my online update settings at "manual"... and the msg never pops up after few hours... But yeah.. It starts popping when its outdated maybe after couple of days... And I always update it asap... So never really allowed it to bug me...

Thanks Preeti_20! I'm glad that you took a look at my work...

These links are of previous version... But I think they can work on 2009 too... I'll try it in couple of days!

Archer

Oh! Updates for KIS 2009 is not yet available.
It's still 2008 na.

newprouser

I don't think kaspersky intends to provide offline updates anyway , for whatever reason it is !

itsmemad

I did the scan as u asked... here are the results... what about ur scan with bitdefender?

Evander Leopold

bitdefender is in top shape.

is port 135 at ur end forwarded. if not find out which program is using it. its a potential security threat to leave a port open. anybody who knows ur ip can hack into ur system through that port.
And also find out if there is a stealth option in ur firewall settings. if so, then enable it. by being in stealth, ur firewall wont ping any hacker ip(who tried to hack u) and thus make u invisible in the net.

i knew it
zonealarm is also a great firewall. but i like a security system where everything (antivirus,firewall) is inbuilt and top-notch. thats why i use bitdefender.

Archer

TCP Port 135 is used by RCP & DCOM services in Windows XP. TCP port 135 is a famous attack spot. I got dozen virus attacks in the same port & Avast blocked them (Zone Alarm was disabled then).

These services depend on it to work.

1. SSDP Discovery Service
2. Windows Time
3. Messenger
4. Remote Registry
5. System Event Notification
6. Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
7. Distributed Transaction Coordinator
8. Task Scheduler service
9. COM+ Event System
10. COM+ System Application

But it's OK for me because of Zone Alarm.

newprouser

I tried three combinations , and all of em came clean..

1. Kaspersky AV + ZA
2. Norton IS
3. Norton AV + commodo

Thx for mentioning the site..

itsmemad

Seems u r using Kaspersky AV... I guess I should use it too rather than Kaspersky IS... That way I can install my favorite firewall Comodo... Thanks for sharing the tests results...

Evander Leopold

but please let me know who was using that open port before u uninstall it. system security is a hobby of mine.

newprouser

Tell me if the KAV + Commodo combo works properly, coz i am under the impression that all kaspersky products are incompatible with commodo..

itsmemad

Mine too..

dcom-scm
DCOM Service Control Manager is using the port... btw, I'm not uninstalling it right now... As therez no problem yet... I've to format my system in few days to customize it...

I guess not... cuz I chatted with Comodo support while installing Kaspersky IS... They told me that Comodo will work with Kaspersky AV... Still I'll update!

newprouser

I'm not really paranoid abt security.

But when u connect to internet and find that within 10s ur security software displays an intruition alert from ip 117.xxx.xx.xx , you really gotta be carefull...

I would rather trust a hacker channel rather than a BSNL network !