F-Secure Internet Security 2006 review

F-Secure produces one of the most effective anti-virus programs we've tested, but last time we reviewed its internet security suite we found that the firewall section of the software was not as ahead of the game as the anti-virus component.

This time around the situation still looks very much the same.

The firewall asks a lot of questions during installation, and detects and confirms default internet applications such as Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. The application control system is straightforward to use, although it's not quite as simple as ZoneAlarm's. That's partly because it can do more, though, so advanced users will be happy with the extra options.

The log files showed evidence of our port scans but didn't present a full list of attempts to connect to our computer. That's no bad thing, but it did assume that many of the entries were caused by malware such as viruses. This is a dangerous assumption to make, as they are based on the number of the port being checked. Viruses and Trojans can easily change the ports they use, making these alerts misleading.

Getting Mirosoft's IIS web server to work properly with F-Secure's firewall was hard work. At some point the web server was disabled and, once we had restarted it, F-Secure alerted us to a server running on the system. That's all well and good but, after allowing it to be an internet server, the firewall allowed access to the mail and file transfer services, too. You'll need to create a rule to block SMTP and FTP, which is quite easy to do.

The intrusion detection system showed no sign of recognising or blocking our web probes, which was disappointing. Even so, the F-Secure firewall is not bad and is reasonably easy to use. The excellent anti-virus component saves this package and makes it a good-value internet security suite.