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Kaspersky Anti-Virus: The Right Tool for the Job?

By // July 6, 2007, 4:00 AM PST

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  • Kaspersky Anti-Virus

    By: Anthony Sullivan

    You know the feeling. You're sitting there minding your own business, going about your computing day when... BAM! You're computer goes wonky and you know something isn't right. Maybe it reboots, maybe you start getting errors, or maybe files just start to disappear. One thing is for sure: you've got a virus.

    Or, maybe you don't know what this is like. Perhaps you only know what it's like for your computer to casually tell you that it has thwarted yet another attempt to infiltrate your system by some nefarious evil-doing snippet of code.

    If either of these scenarios has happened to you, you already know how important virus protection is. But how do you choose the right anti-virus protection from among the tons of options out there? Today, take a peek at Kaspersky Anti-Virus and decide for yourself if this is the solution for you.

    You can download your own trial copy of Kaspersky Anti-Virus from the TechRepublic software library.

    After installing Kaspersky, you are asked it activate the software. Since we are just checking it out and haven't bought a copy yet, we'll want to activate a trial.

  • Interactive Protection

    Kaspersky can run in two modes. In Basic mode it does the bare minimum.

    In Interactive mode you get additional protection for the registry as well as more frequent alerts.

    I chose Interactive to see how annoying it really was. I found tha it wasn't intrusive at all and the extra protection is worth an extra alert from time to time.

  • Update

    On this screen you must tell Kaspersky how often to update virus definitions. Select the highest frequence you can handle to maintain the most up-to-date security.

    The default is "automatically," which I took to mean it pretty much constantly watches.

  • Scheduling Scans

    It makes sense to have regular scans. This isn't set by default, however.

    I recommend checking and configuring each of these. A full computer scan should occur no less than once a week and critical areas should be scanned daily.

  • Password Protection

    This allows you to password-protect your virus settings and is probably not necessary. However, if you have young people who also use your computer and might disable virus protection for some reason, you might want to set this.

  • Restart...

    Now we must restart to apply the changes we've made.

  • Restarted

    Once you've restarted you will see this bubble pop up.

    Since you've just installed, Kaspersky would like to start with a clean slate and do a full scan. I definitely recommend doing this.

    Click the Scan My Computer link in the button to begin scanning.

  • Menu

    Now that Kaspersky is running on your computer you will see an icon running in your system tray.

    If you right-click on it, you will see this menu. It shows the status of any tasks that it is doing by showing a percentage next to the option.

  • Scanning

    If you click Scan my Computer you will see this screen. This gives you a view of what is being scanned and, if you are unfortunate, shows any infections that have been discovered.

  • Settings

    If you choose Settings from the context menu you will see this options screen. We'll go over these settings, but you will not likely need to change much.

    This screen lets you configure what you want Kaspersky to look for.

  • File Anti-virus

    You can disable File Anti-Virus on this tab as well as or change the default action when an infection is found.

    The security level setting is ambiguous, though. I would recommend using the customize button and setting these yourself.

  • Mail Anti-virus

    The settings options on the Mail Anti-Virus screen are identical to those on the File Anti-Virus screen, except you can specify what protocol(s) to monitor.

    You can also enable or disable Outlook integration.

  • Web Anti-virus

    Again, this screen looks much like the others.

    I've found with other virus protection software that Web protection often causes problems. If you are experiencing problems with IE or Web sites, I would disable this as a troubleshooting option.

  • Proactive Defense

    This is a pretty neat feature that analyzes what applications are doing to catch suspicious behavior before it does damage.

    I'm sure it doesn't catch everything, but catching just one is worth having it enabled.

    You also control the Registry Guard from this screen.

  • Critical Areas

    On this tab you can tell Kaspersky what is considered a Critical Area and what isn't. Use the Customize button to configure this. The slider is too general and may miss something you want covered.

  • My Computer

    There really shouldn't be anywhere on your computer that isn't scanned but sometimes folders with lots of small files in them can cause performance issues for virus scanners.

    Here you can change what gets scanned on your computer and what doesn't. Don't disable any areas that aren't causing any problems.

  • Startup Objects

    Because Kaspersky can detect questionable applications as well as known threats, it may be necessary to disable the scanning of certain applications and startup objects.

    Click the Customize button to modify what startup objects get scanned.

  • Update

    On the Update tab you can change the settings for when the update for virus definitions and application modules runs.

    You can also disable the update altogether. I don't recommend this.

  • Data Files

    These settings apply to logs and files that have been quarantined.

    If you find a file has been quarantined, it's always a good idea to establish its value sooner rather than later. Most packages will delete the file after a certain amount of time.

    On this screen, you can change the window of time that you have to make certain that you can afford to lose the infected file.

  • Network Settings

    If you are behind a firewall or proxy you will need to configure the settings on this screen to allow for definition updates.

  • Right Tool?

    The last screen of our configuration settings is the appearance settings. Personally, I just hope I never see the application other than running in my system tray. I couldn't care less what it looks like.

    After looking over this application, I can only find one flaw: the Price.

    Currently there are dozens of products available for anti-virus protection. Most of them cash in at about $20 per user. Kaspersky comes in at a whopping $39. It's a great product and seems to work well, but I think they've priced themselves out of my market.

    Kaspersky Anti-Virus, as good as it looks and as well as it works, is not the Right Tool for the Job.

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Kaspersky Anti-Virus

By: Anthony Sullivan

You know the feeling. You're sitting there minding your own business, going about your computing day when... BAM! You're computer goes wonky and you know something isn't right. Maybe it reboots, maybe you start getting errors, or maybe files just start to disappear. One thing is for sure: you've got a virus.

Or, maybe you don't know what this is like. Perhaps you only know what it's like for your computer to casually tell you that it has thwarted yet another attempt to infiltrate your system by some nefarious evil-doing snippet of code.

If either of these scenarios has happened to you, you already know how important virus protection is. But how do you choose the right anti-virus protection from among the tons of options out there? Today, take a peek at Kaspersky Anti-Virus and decide for yourself if this is the solution for you.

You can download your own trial copy of Kaspersky Anti-Virus from the TechRepublic software library.

After installing Kaspersky, you are asked it activate the software. Since we are just checking it out and haven't bought a copy yet, we'll want to activate a trial.

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