#Zonealarm security suite 5.5 series#

ThereвЂ™s no doubt that this is the most flexible spam filter of any weвЂ™ve tested here, it uses the technology of spam specialist MailFrontier, but it demands that you get down and dirty with it before youвЂ™ll see the real results. The end result was a lot of patently obvious spam slipping through, the only bonus of which being the false-positive rate was low from the get go. Out of the box the detection rate was one of the worst in our tests, mainly because if an вЂapproachвЂ™ didnвЂ™t need time to learn what is and isnвЂ™t spam, it was set to the bland middle ground by default.

If you just want to block as much spam as possible with the gentlest learning curve, forget it. If you like sliders youвЂ™ll be on cloud nine. If this sounds confusing, wait until you see the configuration options for each. Which means thereвЂ™s the challenge/response approach, the collaborative blacklisting approach, the non-collaborative blacklisting approach and the message content-filtering approach. The new anti-spam measures look like Zone Labs really just couldnвЂ™t make up its mind what it wanted, or what would work best, so it decided to throw everything in the arsenal at the problem. Anything that helps to prevent key-loggers from grabbing your data is okay by us.

#Zonealarm security suite 5.5 series#

This protection also extends to IM sessions where protected data is replaced by a series of asterisks in the conversation. An Information Vault encrypts and stores the personal data you want it to, and any subsequent entering of that information online prompts ZoneAlarm to ask if you want the destination URL added to your trusted sites list or blocked.

Instant messages for the main players (including AIM, MSN, Trillian, Yahoo! and some smaller clients) are encrypted, but only if both users have either the Security Suite or IMSecure installed. IMSecure continues to impress, protecting the user from IM spam (SPIM). This is useful for finding out more detail about would-be hackers, especially the reporting of inbound event information for further analysis and escalation to the host ISP for action. This employs a set of вЂHacker IDвЂ™ utilities, essentially WHOIS linked to graphical IP mapping and an integrated event reporting feature. When you do see an alert, AlertAdvisor can be called up using the More Info button. As a result, you get less of the вЂgeneric host processвЂ™ alerts. An Automatic Program Configuration feature, similar to that in Norton Personal Firewall, scans Internet-facing apps and matches them to a database of more than 10,000 files. Web-content filtering is top-class, providing more than 30 configurable categories. The Computer AssociatesвЂ™ anti-virus module remains effective, although weвЂ™re still waiting for IMAP4 email scanning to be supported. This is a masterpiece of user interface design. Once installed, the simple and familiar elegance of the integrated ZoneAlarm control panel enables less confident users to see what ZoneAlarm is doing to protect them on a вЂfire and forgetвЂ™ basis, but crucially without isolating the more technically competent user in the process.