ESS's firewall offers three security modes to choose from depending on your security preferences and how much advance rule defining and responding to alert dialogs you're willing to do. The default Automatic mode is the simplest, allowing unimpeded outbound traffic and blocking unsolicited inbound traffic.
The interactive mode will prompt for action whenever no rule exists that pertains to a particular kind of traffic. Finally, those that want to start from the most secure stance possible can opt for policy-based mode, which will without fanfare drop any traffic for which a rule does not explicitly apply.
ESS's anti-spam feature integrates with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, or Vista's Windows Mail clients, providing a toolbar that makes it easy to flag messages as spam and build whitelists and blacklists by designating addresses as trusted or not.
We wish ESS's antispam integration extended to non-Microsoft mail clients like Mozilla Thunderbird or Eudora — this is admittedly not a common feature, but McAfee's Internet Security Suite now includes it. The spam filtering in ESS was decidedly hit-or-miss at first — it didn't erroneously flag any legitimate messages, but it let a fair amount of spam through its net. After a day or two of training, the spam recognition did seem to improve quite a bit.
ESS's relatively lightweight system footprint is plainly evident during system scans for viruses, spyware, and other unpleasantness. While ESS was conducting a full scan of an XP system (with a dual-core Athlon 64 and 2 GB of RAM), the machine's responsiveness to other tasks and applications was slightly more lackadaisical than normal, but still quite good overall.
By comparison, most other security applications we've used have bogged down the system to a significant degree. ESS's scanning duration was also impressive — it took 59 minutes to scan the system (encompassing well over 800,000 items in all), while Norton Internet Security 2007 took nearly three times longer — 2 hours 44 minutes to be exact.
Pricing
ESET Smart Security is compatible with Windows Vista, XP, and 2000 and is now available for purchase as of 11/05/07. A full-featured 30-day trial is also avilable for download.
ESS's price tag is $59.99 for a single system, or 10 bucks more to install on two systems. In comparison, two PC installs for $70 is one less than most of the competitive suites typically give you for the same price. (A Business Edition of ESS adding centralized deployment and administration is due for release on November 26th at $40.99 per seat for a minimum of five seats.)
On the downside, ESET Smart Security doesn't offer the same soup-to-nuts list of features you get with the security suites from major vendors, and its feast-or-famine interface doesn't always provide a happy medium between novice and advanced users. In spite of these shortcomings, though, ESET Smart Security does provide thorough system protection from a variety of malware threats without excessively bogging down your system, easily making it worthy of consideration in the current morass of bloatware security tools.
Pros: NOD32's superb antivirus engine combined with thorough anti-spyware, anti-spam, and firewall capabilities; ultra-efficient operation with minimal system overhead — no Internet security bloatware here; attractive, intuitive interface
Cons: Lacks some of the additional features provided in security suites from major vendors like McAfee and Symantec, such as parental controls, backup features, etc.; interface doesn't always provide a happy medium between novice and advanced users; a bit pricier than competing security tools (2-system license is about the same as the cost of competitors' 3-system licenses)
