SecureIT Plus (2013)

The phrase "security suite" refers to an integrated collection of security features, but just what features are included varies widely from product to product. Antivirus and firewall protection are both required, for sure. Spam filtering, parental control, and phishing protection are common additions. Some suites add backup and PC performance tuneup. SecureIT Plus (2013) ($5.95/month) includes quite a few of these features, but they're not all top quality.

You pay for most security suites on a yearly subscription basis, typically from $60 to $80 for a three-PC license. SecureIT Plus's $5.95/month cost looks cheap, at first glance, but over the course of a year you'll spend $71.40 for a one-PC license. So actually it's quite a bit more expensive than most suites.

Uneven Antivirus
This product's antivirus protection is exactly the same as that of the company's standalone antivirus product. For full details please read my review of SecureIT (2013). I'll summarize here.

Getting SecureIT installed on my malware-infested test systems was relatively uneventful. The product resolved a few glitches on its own. Efficient intervention by tech support solved a couple of problems with collateral damage caused by SecureIT's scan.

However, the product totally failed to install on one test system, the one that only boots in Safe Mode. SecureIT can't install in Safe Mode, and the company doesn't offer any kind of emergency tools for such an occasion. Your only recourse is to pay $89.95 for their malware removal service, which seems a bit over the top.

On the systems where it did manage to install, SecureIT did a so-so cleanup job. It detected just 66 percent of the malware samples. In a number of cases it detected and removed the malware installer while totally missing the active, installed malware. Its overall score of 4.9 points for malware removal is well below the average. Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete 2013 and Norton Internet Security (2013) both scored 6.6 points in this test.

On the plus side, the 2013 edition scored quite a bit better than its predecessor managed in this same test. For details on how I measure success at malware removal, see How We Test Malware Removal.

By contrast, in my malware blocking test SecureIT performed phenomenally. Its overall score of 9.7 points is beaten only by Webroot, which managed a near-perfect 9.9 of 10 points. For a full explanation of my malware blocking test, see How We Test Malware Blocking.

Normally I'd check my results against results from the independent testing labs, but none of the labs I follow tests SecureIT. I'm told that SecureIT uses the antivirus engine from Bitdefender Internet Security 2013, but its results don't remotely match Bitdefender's in my own tests. The chart below shows how various products have done in recent tests. For more detail about the labs, see How We Interpret Antivirus Lab Tests.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/sqoIF8DgWIU/0,2817,2414448,00.asp

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