A closer look at F-Secure Internet Security 2010

Following a redesign of their logo and their motto, F-Secure redesigned their Internet Security suite. F-Secure Internet Security 2010 is a security solution designed for protecting the computer (and the user) from perils that lurk on the Internet.

Installing the suite comes with options: automatic or step-by-step. If you choose the latter, you’ll be asked if you want the full installation with or without Parental Control.

Upon starting the program for the first time, if you opted for the Parental Control option, a browsing mode wizard appears within which you’ll be able to define who uses the computer (small children, teenagers, or both – children can access only those website you specify, and teenagers cannot access websites that contain certain restricted content such as drugs or adult material), limit the daily browsing time of teenagers (even to specific hours) and block web content from teenagers:

After doing all of that, you still have to wait a little for the installation to be complete. In the meantime, you can see what the program offers:

The Status shows your current state of protection (firewall, application control, e-mail filtering, DeepGuard, etc. – are they switched on or off?).

The Task menu shows the tasks you can perform:

The scanning options are: virus and spyware scan, full computer scan or scan by choice.

Full scan in progress (notice the numbered steps in the right top corner):

Further steps – spyware cleaning in this case:

After the cleaning process, your web browser automatically opens to a page on the F-Secure website, where you can read about the specific peril the program found (spyware, virus, etc.). A good thing for novices.

If you have opted for the Parental Control option, you can change your settings only if you enter the password. After that you can choose different options regarding virus and spyware scanning, DeepGuard, scheduled scans, firewall, application control, intrusion prevention, logging e-mail filtering, Parental Control, etc. For example, here is how the browsing protection options menu looks like:

The Statistics:

F-Secure Internet Security 2010 is a elegant looking, easy-to-use security tool that will appeal to the everyone. The interface is simple, every option is clearly explained so that you know what you’re doing all the time. This new version offers improved performance, including 70% less memory consumption and 60% faster scanning. New features include Browsing Protection and Exploit Shield (which stops attacks that target security holes in the browser and in plug-ins).

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