KIS - Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0 - is Russia's best complex online security software package. KIS is a full-scale security suite created by Eugene Kaspersky, a Russian programmer from Moscow, that combines spyware protection, a spam filter, and a reliable firewall. It is a leading antivirus software package in Russia and Europe,less known in the United States. It is ranked high with many an independent PC security online magazine. The reasons for such good evaluation are numerous.

KIS 6.0 has got a Checkmark certification from West Coast Labs both for virus detection and removal and for Trojan and spyware detection. ICSA Labs certifies it for virus detection, and Virus Bulletin has given it the VB100% award. KIS 6.0 has not got the parental control capability offered by other renowned companies, but it provides all necessary protection for private data.

What makes KAV even more attractive is that it is effective in blocking as yet unknown threats (zero-day attacks) thanks to its Proactive Defense and firewall. KAV saves time by only scanning new files and those that have changed since the last scan. It greatly speeds up the system performance that is especially felt when running KIS on a Core2Duo CPU powered computer. If the system becomes busy, the malware scanner throttles back, thus freeing resources for the current tasks.

Unlike ZoneAlarm, KIS can check for viruses and spyware at the same time. In fact, KIS may perform its tasks simultaneously in the background. Provided you turn off all notifications, the software will never annoy you with its presence.

On-access protection is very important if you want to really stop any harmful program from ruining your system. KAV scans every local and remote file you access. Anti-spam filter checks for malware in your SMTP and IMAP e-mail, so that no virus can reach your inbox folder. On finding any suspicious attachment, KIS removes it and notifies the user about the problem. The antivirus tool searches all incoming HTML streams for malware, and denies access in an emergency.

A full scan may last for more than an hour on a big system, but a repeat scan will be over in a couple of minutes as most of the files remain unchanged. As for spyware blocking, KIS is quite good. It does not let the majority of keyloggers run on a clean computer, and even if it cannot handle any commercial keyloggers from the very beginning, it blocks their activity altogether.

If there is a spontaneous problem that may lead to a system damage, KIS reboots the computer, and then scanning picks up where it left off. In the end, KIS is much similar to Spyware Doctor, is better than McAfee at blocking malware installations and removes threats as effectively as Norton.

Anti-Hacker and Proactive Defense modules constitute KIS firewall. Do not forget to turn on Proactive defense to ensure maximum protection, but be prepared to "teach" the scanner by clicking confirmation dialogs. Unfortuantely, with this level of protection completely innocent programs are reported as harmful by KIS. So, it is a good rival for Zonealarm, as the latter is none the better in this domain. But it is almost impossible to automatically disable KIS firewall and that is important.

Like many security suites, KIS spam scanner leaves much to be desired. The antispam tool scans both POP3 and IMAP mail accounts for any e-mail client, but only integrates with Outlook, Outlook Express or The Bat!. To make the filter work it should be taught maby marking messages as "Spam" or "Not Spam" until the program notifies you that it is ready. Whitelist can be automatically created from your contacts in the Address Book and it also automatically adds addresses you use to send mails as "Not Spam". You can also blacklist certain addresses or domains. It assigns each message a spam score by analyzing content, images, and header data. Based on the score, it flags messages as spam or probable spam.

Pros: Antivirus scans files on access, scans e-mail, and Internet traffic. It also skips unchanged files to speed up scanning. Proactive Defense blocks malware-style leak tests providing high-level computer security.

Cons: Proactive Defense reports many innocent events. Antispam accuracy is mediocre. No privacy protection or parental-control features (they are added in KIS 7.0). If there are other antivirus packages installed on the system, conflict may occcur.

Bottom Line: Kaspersky Internet Security 6 prevents viruses, spyware, worms and spam e-mails from penetrating your computer system with reliable real time protection and scanning. KIS firewall does much more than standard basic blocking software that protects against malware-style leak-test techniques. Unfortunately, the firewall settings are too strict and many inoffensive programs . As with many security suites, its weakest element is spam protection.

The information was partly taken from http://www.pcmag.com