Product Description

This comprehensive, all-in-one suite is a tightly integrated set of advanced security layers that, together, create the most secure protection in the industry. ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite stops hackers and cyber criminals from stealing your identity and proactively protects your PC with the most advanced, multi-layered, firewall-based security available.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4054 in Software
• Brand: Zone Labs
• Model: 100704
• Released on: 2006-09-05
• Platforms: Windows 2000, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Original language: English

Features

• Guards the network perimeter from inbound and outbound threats with the world's number one firewall
• Prevents spyware and other malicious programs from sending your personal information across the Internet
• Automatically makes your computer invisible to anyone on the Internet
• Monitor additional program actions for more thorough protection
• Stops pre-approved credit card offers, which contain sensitive financial data often used by criminals for identity theft

Amazon.com
Now offered at a special price for three users, this comprehensive, all-in-one suite is a tightly integrated set of advanced security layers that, together, create the most secure protection in the industry. Uniquely engineered to prevent threats from getting on a PC in the first place, it has won more major awards than any other security software on the market. The suite combines the robust security features computer experts demand with automatic functions that make it simple enough for novices to use.

Learn more about the features of ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 2007 (requires Flash).

Network and Program Firewall Features
These features deliver proactive firewall protection with multiple layers of security that stop inbound, outbound, and program attacks while remaining completely invisible to hackers. It also prevents spyware and other malicious programs from sending your personal information across the Internet, automatically makes your computer invisible to anyone on the Internet, protects your programs from malware, and more.

Operating System Firewall (OSFirewall) Features
This additional layer of security prevents hard-to-remove spyware from getting onto your PC and causing damage. The OS Firewall will monitor program installation and registry changes and file access down to your PC's core. It will also monitor additional program actions for more thorough protection, and Prevents malicious software from damaging files in your core Windows operating system.

Antivirus and Identity Theft Protection Features
These features will continually and automatically search for, find, and remove viruses and other malicious software in a single, powerful operation. While ZoneAlarm continues to secure your identity information on your PC, these new Identity Theft Protection services also prevent identity theft over the Internet and even in the physical world.

Anti-Spyware, Spy Site Blocking, and Privacy Protection Features
These features always run full-strength to catch and eliminate spyware before it gets onto your PC. It prevents spyware from getting on your PC by blocking its primary source: spyware distribution websites. It also manages and blocks pop-up ads, online profiling, cookies, cache, and scripts so you can surf in peace.

Anti-Spam, Anti-Phishing, IM Protection, and Game Mode Features
IM protection protects your instant messages--even those sent between different services--so they can't be monitored. One-click control temporarily suppresses most security alerts and prevents them from interrupting your gaming while maintaining maximum protection for your PC.

Other Protections
Email security will quarantine suspicious attachments to help defend against unknown viruses, and it automatically halts outbound messages to keep you from accidentally infecting others. The Wireless PC protection feature automatically detects wireless networks and secures your PC from hackers and other Internet threats wherever you're connected--at home or on the road. For parents with children at home, there is a parental control feature that prevents children from viewing inappropriate content on Web sites. And last but not least, the SmartDefense service feature provides your PC with real-time security updates, improved response to breaking spyware threats, and new attack protection capabilities.

Customer Reviews

Excellent product
I am very computer savvy and in fact also have worked extensively in security framework/development/network security.
I have investigated and used almost all the market prevalent so-called *suites* and in my humble opinion, I think this is the best.
Why? -> Let's take Mcfee : Product-wise - excellent but the quirks in it, really kills. If you set the privacy advisor to protect some information from leaking out, no matter what, it keeps asking you for permission. Very, very frustrating. It's the SAME problem with Norton.
Norton -> Worst of the lot .. extremely slow and it's spyware protection is useless.

So, the good points of ZoneAlarm -> Very, very powerful firewall. Protects at network, then programs trying to access the Internet/Intranet (Trusted Zone) and finally registry-changes (OS-Firewall). So much so, I have VPN and if you're able to understand how, you can use the Expert Rules section to enable it, without a hitch.

Anti-virus -> Very, very good. I purposely installed and run in a machine, having a rootkit (the infamous Sony rootkit); it found it. Norton/Mcfee -> nada.

Anit-spyware -> Good but could have been better. Support for Netcape/Mozilla(firefox) is not present. Also, my advice is to have 1 more spyware blocker along with the product (my take is Spyware Doctor)

Email/Spam -> Very, very good. But junk-filtering causes some marked delay in opening the mail-box and the 3rd. party product they use: MailFrontier uses up some memory. My advice, if your ISP has a blocker rely on that and in-bound protection disable.

Identity protection/etc. -> Now, this is a pleasant surprise. These blokes have done a really terrific job there. TO TOP IT, ONCE UPGRADE IS DONE, IT SEEMS THAT SUBSCRIBERS ARE OFFERED A FREE IDENTITY PROTECTION PROGRAM ENROLLMENT FOR C.CARDS,SSN, ETC.!!!!

Parental controls/controls on timings of Internet -> All there and works!

The only comparable market consumer product : F-secure Internet Suite.

Caveats and suggestions: I hope someone from Zonealarm also reads this. The protection for common chat-services are very, very weak. Only covers few of the many in use today. Google-Talk/Skype are not covered.
Over time, the program and component list grows tremendously, which causes a significant boot-time delay, when computer starts up. I have to manual go and delete the expired entries every once in a while (file not exist anymore). Believe me, it's no joke to go through the component section!
For this I take 1 whole point, as it's pretty frustrating!!

The email protection should be improved upon immediately to reduce the processor-hogging MailFrontier process. A nice feature which is used interenally by Zonealarm is they scan the whole mail-box and create a list of emails I have ever received/sent mails to. It would be great if the same can be made into an exportable report option, for consumers to just export and then add to their own address book emails they might have missed adding, but just replied back earlier.
The spyware program definitely needs some more work.

Other than these, it also cleans up some MRUs/etc. (but it's an elementary cleanup). A word about this particular version and Zonealarm in general; when purchasing don't worry too much 'bout the version,etc. If you've purchased a brand new license, you can upgrade to their latest from the software, etc. Yep -> There's another caveat, their upgrade is rather strange, makes up download the whole bloody software again (around 22 Mb.) and these choose upgrade/clean install! Finally, it's not automatic, it's manual upgrade. (Note : Virus/spyware upgrades are automatic).

A note to all - do keep program-control/firewall to MEDIUM intially and then switch to HIGH; that way this product learns usage and configures itself accordingly.

The best of the One-Stop computer security packages
This is a great product from an established company that needs more recognition. It's major problem is that it's a security suite and security suties are imperfect.

The reviews for security suite software always seem the same to me. A user reports that installing the security suite made his computer break or caused it to lose performance. He called and tried to get help and couldn't get a hold of anyone. When he does get through he gets advice to the effect of "format your hard drive". Then during reinstallation the same thing happens all over again. It's a mad nightmare scenario that will happen sooner or later to you with every security suite.

Zone alarm won't save you from this scenario. The problem is that no security suite will, they all have terrible support and make some computers crazy. You have to accept that. Zone alarm has a great message board thoguh and I suggest you use it when the time comes. It's really random chance if the default configuration will effect the performance of your machine. You can try all the vendors if you want since they all have trial software and take whcih oen causes you "the least" problems. That's not the best security move but you're be.

What this product DOES offer is the best firewall teamed up with some good virus protection and decent spyware removal. It gives you the most amount of options with regards to the firewall and virus scanning of allt the suites. Norton and McAffe have been moving away from this level of control while Zone Alarm seems genuinely interested in giving you the power to protect your system.

This product offers the best firewall you can get. The firewall is the heart of any secuirty package so this is pivotal. Do you want to keep hackers out in the first place or do you wnat to let them in and then try to clean up the mess afterwards? The clean up after the fact is painful and arduous and if the hacker is determined then nearly impossible to do.

Zone Alarm has the most experience with firealls and it shows. When personal software firewalls were a thing for paranoid hackers these guys were the best and in many ways nothing has changed. Thier firewall is still excellent but it still has the steepest learning curve. It was meant for power users and only in the last few years could I consider recomending it to an average user.

Norton and Mcaffe both slapped this feature onto their products and in some ways it still shows. Norton's is probably the easiest to use. However it's been painfully easy in the past to accidentally make your system completely vulnerable without you knowing with Norton. It's also a huge resource hog generally speaking.

Zone Alarm decent virus protection. Not as good as Kapernssky (easily the best but it comes at a premium) but roughly equal to McAffe. I believe Zone Alarm licensed their anti-virus detection engine from Computer Associates and as such it does a good job. It's significantly better then Norton's performance both in terms of performance, accuracy and options.

Zone Alarm offers spyware detection and removal. This should be a feature that all security suties offer but last time I checked they did not. It's not as good as AdAware but then again you should downlaod that for free anyway. In fact you probably should no matter what package you buy. The great thing about spyware scanners is you can never have too many. They don't conflict with each other nearly as badly as multiple firewalls and virus scanners would.

Oh as a tip you might want to consider a root kit detector too. No packaged security solution deals with this security threat at all. Look up rootkit reavealer on the net. I think by this year or the next this will be part of the primary mode of attack against XP.

Better than I thought!
Before I bought this product, I went to ZoneAlarm's (ZA) website for the 15-day trial version. I had been using Norton Internet Security (NIS) and Trend Micro for quite a few years but grew tired to slow machine performance and huge files taking up hard drive space. The latest NIS 2007 is 330MB (minus parental control). ZA take 50+ percent less space and runs twice as fast. Before I installed ZA, I had to make sure that all remnants of my old NIS were removed. That meant cleaning up the registry, directories, etc. If you don't, you might encounter serious problems. That also applies to previous versions of ZA. I also went to ZA's website and downloaded their 270-page manual and visited their user forum to get an idea of what I kind of problems others were encountering during the installation process. The above process was longer than the actual installation.

I also made sure I was disconnected from my wireless network before the installation. The installation was straight-forward and relatively quick. Yes--I had to reboot a couple of times, because ZA was trying to update the program's spyware & antivirus definition files. It does ask you do reboot so it can finish removing the old files. If you don't reboot, you might risk corrupting certain files. After the reboot, I connected my wireless network and ZA detected it and asked me what kind of network it was. It then started asking me what programs I wanted to give access to the internet. That can be difficult for a novice, but ZA allows you to view program details (i.e., filename, directory location, etc.) so you can decide for yourself. NIS doesn't even do that for you. ZA allows you to go back later and change the configuration if you want. That's was it. I was surfing in no time.

I used ZA for about a week before I decided to purchase 4 licenses and install them on a laptop & three desktops. All my installations were flawless. This program really improved my computer performance and made it easy for me to configure my MSN/Yahoo Messenger, Logitech webcam, Outlook Express and Outlook 2003. The junk-mail filters work on all computers--each having three POP mail accounts (set up in Outlook Express & Outlook 2003). The junk-mail filter works better in the program than NIS.

The tabs in ZA are set up in such a way that it makes it easy for people to scroll through the options quickly and set up whatever configuration you want. Even when I uninstalled the trial version--I didn't run into any problems installing the boxed version as long as I removed the directories and cleaned the registry. Keep in mind--when you use the uninstall feature in any computer program--IT WILL STILL LEAVE A LOT OF STUFF ON YOUR COMPUTER. It later turned out that the trial version and boxed version are the same. All I had to do with the other three computers was add the license key (in the already installed trial version) and that was it. No uninstalling/reinstalling required.

Bottom line--this is a very good program. The user guide on their website is very extensive and should be carefully reviewed prior to installation. I'm really happy I went with ZA.