Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security 2006

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-20-2006, 12:04 AM

PC-cillin 2006 is Trend Micro's latest entry into the Internet Security Suite arena. There are obviously a wide range of products playing in this space, and while PC-cillin doesn't have the name recognition of McAfee or Symantec (a.k.a. Norton) it proves to be a solid product with some unique features.
Like many people I have been a long-time Symantec/Norton user. My opinion has always been that while its tools can be a bit of a pain at times, Norton always has had the reputation of providing maximum protection--and that's what we really buy these products for, right? I have become increasingly unhappy with the performance and "invasiveness" of the last few Symantec versions, however, and when I bought a new Dell PC this year I decided to give the McAfee product that came pre-installed a shot. I was pretty happy with the performance of McAfee for the three-month trial period. It was less invasive than Symantec and seemed to be doing all of its assigned jobs.
A few days after the trial period ended I got a message saying that the virus definitions were out of date. I obviously couldn't update the definitions without paying for a new subscription, but even worse, McAfee had disabled virus scanning altogether! I was now held hostage to purchasing a subscription to have any protection at all. Although I liked the product I don't like being pushed around by software vendors. So, I decided it was time to find a new security product.
PC-cillin had started to show up in recent direct comparisons to Symantec and McAfee and was getting reasonable reviews, so I decided to give it a try. One of the things that interested me was the reputation that it had for being very fast and very non-intrusive. The initial copy that I got was the 2005 version. My initial impression after install was that this was a pretty unpolished product. The user interface looked low-tech and a bit archaic. Of course, that isn't what makes a virus scanning and security application a success, and after using the product for a few weeks I was very impressed with the performance. Virus scans were much faster than anything that I had ever seen from the other products, and the other functions stayed quietly in the background, presumably doing their job. A few weeks after installing the 2005 version I received the 2006 update. That is the version that I will describe here.
Rather than doing an upgrade I did a complete uninstall of the old version and installed the new one from scratch. My first impression was that the user interface had been completely redone and was now up to current standards. While not as polished in all areas as the Symantec and McAfee products, PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 is perfectly usable and gets the job done.

After getting the new version installed my first action was to do a full scan. Much to my disappointment, the time was much slower than the old version. While I didn't do any measurements it appeared to be more along the lines of the competing products as opposed to the much faster speed that PC-cillin has been known for.
When I explored the virus scan settings I found a feature called Turbo Scan. This was apparently in the older version of the product as well, but perhaps was on by default previously because after turning it on in the new version scan times improved significantly. This feature apparently bypasses files that have already been scanned; presumably it is able to tell if a file has been changed without completely scanning it and therefore saves a lot of time. There are also all of the usual controls for virus scanning and scheduling.

Note the Turbo Scan setting

The real-time virus protection also provides a good level of control and doesn't take up any noticeable overhead. The same is true for e-mail virus scanning.

The personal firewall was the next feature I enabled. At first it appeared to work pretty well. There are preconfigured profiles for different network connection types, including direct connection, wireless, home network, and office network, each intended to have appropriate security controls for their purpose. I went with the direct connection profile at first and it seemed to work fine. The firewall is bi-directional and is configured for common applications for outgoing traffic. When a new application is encountered that is attempting to access the Internet, a simple dialog box is presented that allows the user to permit or block the traffic. In the past I have used Zone Alarm in addition to the firewall from whatever security product I had installed specifically for its excellent ability to deal with outgoing traffic. I have not reinstalled Zone Alarm on this PC and PC-cillin seems to be doing a fine job in its place.

The firewall provides the ability to fine tune the built-in profiles and create new ones. As it turned out this became necessary because a few weeks after I started using PC-cillin I had problem accessing the Internet. At first I thought I was having a problem with either my router or cable modem, but then discovered that my other PCs were connecting just fine. After some trial and error I figured out that the PC-cillin firewall was blocking all traffic. I played around with the settings and was able to get it working again, but ultimately that only way I fully solved the issue was to create a new firewall profile and allow it to relearn the configuration from scratch. Switching back to the original direct connection default profile kills my connection. One strike, but let's go on.

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-20-2006, 12:06 AM

One thing that I hadn't bothered with much in the past was privacy protection. With increased threats from phishing and other personal information theft I decided that it was about time to start using those tools for protection. This unfortunately turned out to be Strike Two. PC-cillin provides a set of tools for configuring privacy protection and lets you configure all of the items to protect:

The problems begin when the privacy protection kicks in. When a form submission is detected in the browser that contains any configured private information a dialog box is presented with a warning and the ability to override the warning if the submission is legitimate.

What this entails is selecting Add Exception and then entering your PC-cillin password as a confirmation. This then leaves you at the following screen in the browser:

The problem is that now you need to go back in the browser to the page that originally attempted to send the information. Depending on the design of the website it is likely that the form is now blank and you are left to reenter your information. What a pain!
The next feature to be considered is spyware protection. I use a set of freeware applications that generally are 99.99% effective, so this isn't a really important feature for me. Turns out that this is a good thing. While PC-cillin seems to do a good job at finding spyware, the cleanup phase is a major headache. The user is required to individually select each spyware item from a list, select Delete, and then confirm the deletion in the following dialog box:

There is no way to select multiple items or the complete list and delete them all together. Oh, well, I didn't need to use the spyware feature anyway

**Brandon Sheley** · 08-20-2006, 12:07 AM

One of the security suite things that is important to me is parental control features. PC-cillin has the usual capabilities for this, including predefined website categories (adult content, etc.) and a manual exception list for blocked or allowed sites. The problem is that there is only a single configuration for all users on the PC. Most other products allow setting a separate configuration for each user so that if parents are logged in all sites are available and when the kids log in to their accounts the appropriate sites are blocked. My daughter has her own PC so this is not a major issue, but any time we want to use her PC for anything we have to potentially change the filter to allow us to get to sites we don't allow her to use. Which strike was this? I'm losing count.

Outside of the usual security suite features already covered there are a few unique features in PC-cillin that are quite useful. First is the ability to centrally control multiple PCs in a network. You simply install a copy of PC-cillin on each PC in your home network and then use one main PC to manage the copies on the others over the network. This is a very useful feature if you have PCs spread out all over the house and don't want to have to go to each one to do scans, check logs, etc.
Another useful feature is Wi-Fi Intrusion Detection. This feature allows you to configure the PCs that you allow to connect to your wireless network (it discovers all the currently connected systems and lets you select the ones to add to the configuration). Any attempts made by PCs not on the list to connect to your network are then displayed in a real-time dialog box. Since I use MAC-level filtering on my wireless router this isn't a really important feature for me, but for people running open wireless networks it can point out when neighbors or other less friendly intruders are trying to connect.

There is also the standard complement of e-mail spam filtering capabilities, but as I am a Gmail user I didn't test this feature.

Conclusion
If you are looking for good, basic virus protection that is fast and non-invasive then PC-cillin Internet Security is a good choice. Other features vary in their capability and usefulness based on the needs of the individual user. There is a lot of potential here, and with some minor improvements in usability and performance this could be one of the best Internet security suite products on the market. Overall, I would still keep it for my own use over Symantec and McAfee simply by not using some of the features that aren't critical for me. Based on how this product has continued to improve over the years I expect that these problems will be addressed in future versions and this will become an even stronger contender.
Ratings Defense
I give PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 3 Geekheads out of 5 for Quality based on its very good anti-virus capability balanced against its mediocre to poor other features. A bit of clean up in ease of use and more stability in its firewall and protection features could boost this to a much higher rating.
I could only give this product 2 Geekheads for Geekness. It would be pretty hard for any Internet security suite to be very geeky, and there is nothing particularly cool here. For this kind of product I'd prefer simple, solid features over Geekness anyway, so this isn't really a negative.

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