Fall 2010 security suite roundup

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The fall months may be the season for colder weather and dying leaves, but in the software world it means major updates for security suites. We've reviewed and benchmarked 11 suites, organized them along the traditional line of cost, and picked one in each category that we highly recommend.

We looked at four updated free security options: AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011, Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.3, Microsoft Security Essentials 2, and Ad-Aware Free Internet Security 9. Other well-known free security programs, such as Avast and Avira, generally update in late winter or spring, so they were not included.

AVG made some big improvements this year, notably in tightening up its installation and scans, comparing well with the lightweight Panda Cloud Antivirus' small performance hit. If you're looking for a newly updated free suite, though, AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011 is your best choice.

Seven pay-for-play security suites also updated and were reviewed, including well-known powerhouses like Norton and Kaspersky, but also Trend Micro, BitDefender, Webroot, PC Tools, and AVG Internet Security 2011, the paid upgrade from AVG's free version.

Old haters of Norton are seriously missing out if they haven't given it a shot in the past few years. It's fast, effective, posts minimal system performance hits, and is our choice for top paid security suite of the season. It's not the only game in town, though, as Trend Micro has revamped to offer serious competition, and what Kaspersky lacks in quickness it makes up for in efficacy.



In addition to our product comparison charts (free | paid), check out CNET Labs' performance benchmark comparisons below. (Read more on how CNET Labs tests security programs.)

We can see from these tests that though no single program scored better than all the others, there were clear leaders in the key trials of start-up time impact, shutdown time impact, and time to complete a full scan. Panda Cloud Antivirus is highly competitive with AVG Free, whereas Norton's performance strengths lie in its threat prevention and detection, because several of its competitors leave a smaller footprint on your system.
Free security suite benchmarks:

Security program	Boot time	Shutdown time	Scan time	MS Office performance	iTunes decoding	Media multitasking	Cinebench
Unprotected system	42.5	11.28	n/a	917	180	780	4,795
AVG Anti-Virus Free 2011	55.24	11.59	548	1,039	200	870	4,709
Panda Cloud Antivirus Free 1.3	50.12	14.8	540	1,044	199	832	4,790
Microsoft Security Essentials 2	54	18	1,560	1,038	201	800	4,790
Ad-Aware Internet Security 9	54	18	1,620	1,039	199	797	4,792

*All tests measured in seconds, except for Cinebench. On the Cinebench test, the higher number is better.
 
Paid security suite benchmarks:

Security program	Boot time	Shutdown time	Scan time	MS Office performance	iTunes decoding	Media multitasking	Cinebench
Unprotected system	42.5	11.28	n/a	917	180	780	4,795
Kaspersky Internet Security 2011	47.49	17	1,750	1,068	207	823	4,661
Webroot Internet Security Complete 2011	47.86	15.97	1,459	992	198	848	4,729
BitDefender Total Security 2011	47.84	13.82	775	1,032	200	825	4,769
Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2011	44.79	16.56	500	1,060	201	852	4,765
Norton Internet Security 2011	48.91	11.78	890	1,028	199	861	4,780
AVG Internet Security 2011	56.21	16.3	480	1,043	198	820	4,759
PC Tools Internet Security 2011	55	20	1,245	1,086	204	832	4,792

*All tests measured in seconds, except for Cinebench. On the Cinebench test, the higher number is better.

Seth Rosenblatt

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Seth peers into the deep, dark corners of software so that you don't have to. He has yet to suffer a single nightmare about OS/2.
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China has world's most profitable banking sector

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China's banking sector has been outshining its foreign peers since 2008 when the global financial crisis devastated Wall Street giants like Lehman Brothers. Its total profits, profit growth and returns on capital all rank highest in the world.

The net profits of China's banking sector rose to 668.4 billion yuan in 2009 after a surge of 30.6 percent to 583 billion yuan in 2008. 

The largest five state-owned commercial banks, known as the "Big Five," have been doing well so far this year. The first three quarters has seen a 29 percent increase in the Big Five's net profits, and small and medium-sized shareholding banks saw a more than 30 percent increase.

So far, 18 Chinese banks are on the list of the world's top 500 banks. Three of the Big Five are among the world's largest in terms of capitalization. In the world's five most profitable banks, three are from China.

The Big Five includes the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, the Agricultural Bank of China and Bank of Communications. They are all listed companies.

By Li Jia, People’s Daily Online 

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Politically charged web sites face frequent attacks

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Websites that publish controversial material are facing a barrage of politically-motivated computer attacks, say Harvard University researchers.

The researchers, who launched the survey after hearing complaints from website owners, identified almost 300 attempts to silence independent media and human rights websites over the past year.

"There is almost always a political component to these attacks," says Jillian York, one of the report's authors.

The researchers focused on distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, the technique that temporarily downed the Wikileaks website last month. DDoS attackers aim a flood of signals at a target website until the site, or the network that connects it to the internet, collapses under the strain of the incoming data.

Hundreds of attacks

The Wikileaks attacks were described at the time as a new and dangerous attempt to limit free speech. They are anything but new, according to the report. York and colleagues identified 140 attacks aimed at 280 media and human rights sites over the 12-month period ending in August of this year. They also surveyed the administrators of 45 media and human rights sites; 28 said they had been the target of a DDoS attack in the past year.

Targets include the protest site bauxitevietnam.info, which campaigns against a Chinese-backed project to mine bauxite in an environmentally sensitive part of Vietnam. It went down last January after tens of thousands of Vietnamese computer users were fooled into downloading software that aimed a flood of signals at the site.

Large scale problem

The Harvard team itself has been the victim of an attack. Their server also hosts the site of the Citizen Media Law Project, which supports online and citizen media. The site went down for two hours and remained unstable for a day at the end of August after being targeted by a network of 500 computers, says Hal Roberts, who also worked on the report. As with almost all other DDoS incidents, it is impossible to know who coordinated the attack.

The fact that attackers were able to force the law site offline illustrates the scale of the problem, adds Roberts. The site's server is overseen by two skilled administrators. For less well resourced sites, some of which are set up by volunteers using free-to-use software, the downtime can run to day or weeks. He and York suggest that media and human rights organisations run mirror sites at large blogging platforms, such as Blogger, which can withstand the traffic generated by most DDoS attacks.

Weapon or protest tool?

The Wikileaks attacks brought DDoS to the attention of the public, but security experts have long been aware of the problem. Gunter Ollmann of Damballa, a computer security firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, has blogged extensively on DDoS attacks and notes that as well as being used to silence critics, they are often used as a form of protest. Some commentators have described the attacks on PayPal and Mastercard, which took place after the companies severed links with Wikileaks, as virtual "sit-ins".

"DDoS tools and tactics are unfortunately a very common tactic, whether someone is trying to knock off the opposition within an online game, such as World of Warcraft, or extorting money from gambling sites in the lead up to a major sporting event," he says.

 by Jim Giles (NewScientist)
 

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