That browser is included in Comodo Internet Security Pro 7, an IS suite which takes a slightly different tack from most of its rivals. Also see: Best internet security software. Although it has regular signature-based anti-virus and anti-malware components and can scan a whole PC, selected folders or the system areas, even this part has the unusual option of doing a ratings scan. This checks your files against ratings for them held by Comodo on its servers. The more interesting module is the virtual desktop, which is a secure virtual machine (VM) where you can play happily with new applications, without fear of anything untoward happening to your system. Within this is a copy of Comodo Dragon browser, so you can browse and download stuff. You can use the apps already on your system, too. Other modules include a comprehensive firewall and a sandbox – in addition to the virtual desktop – as well as GeekBuddy. This last is a 24/7 online support facility, which when we tried it, involved an online chat and then remote control of our test system, to fix a problem we’d outlined. This kind of support is pretty good in a product at this price. There are a few modules missing which are offered by other all-in-one security vendors, though. There’s no backup, online or local, although you can trade up to Comodo’s £54/year Internet Security Complete which offers 50 GB of online storage. There’s no Windows PC tune-up, but for this there’s Comodo Cleaning Essentials, a free download, which is said to remove rootkit and malware traces – if rather slowly from our experience. Finally, there’s no parental control, even though this software is listed in the Home and Home Office category.
Comodo Internet Security: on test
The program took 33 minutes 48 seconds to scan our 50 GB test bundle and examined 140,131 files. This gives it a scan rate of 69.10 files per second, putting it in the middle of the field of IS suites we’ve tested. Repeating the test took just nine seconds, but no files were examined. This is unique among the AV software we’ve seen. Although many packages fingerprint files, so they don’t retest what hasn’t changed, this is the first time we’ve seen zero files re-examined. When we compared times to copy a 1 GB file with and without a background scan, we saw a 65 percent increase with the scan running. This implies quite a big resource hit and is supported by the results from AV-Test (www.av-test.org), which scored it 4.0/6.0 in its Performance category. This was for version 6 of the software – results for this version 7 are not yet out. The older version of the program did the same in the Usability category, showing four warnings and 11 blocks of legitimate software. It did best in arguably the most important category of Protection. Here it scored 5.5/6.0, showing good defence against existing and zero-day malware. This score gave the v6 package a total score of 13.5/18.0, which is good, but not in the top echelon. Also see: Best antivirus.
