Customer Reviews

Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Security Suite 2005 [Old Version]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I purchased this package just 5 days after buying Trend Micro Internet Security 2004, as I needed a suite for a second computer and I had only a single license. My second system was running Norton Internet Security 2003 (NIS2003), and I was getting frustrated by the memory footprint and resource consumption of NIS2003 (the antivirus in particular) and decided that I needed to make a change. On the recommendation of the system administrator at the office, I decided to purchase ZoneAlarm Security Suite 2005 (ZSS2005).

I should preface this review by saying, rather bluntly, that I prefer the Trend package. Trend is smaller and faster, which are my two main sticking points when it comes to software. However, Trend also lacks some of the refinements found in bigger packages. I did not make a mistake buying ZSS2005, though, and am happy with my overall decision.

The most important components of the package are the firewall and the antivirus. I will talk to these points first, then discuss the rest of the suite.

The firewall is generally regarded as the best on the market when it comes to software solutions. Those reviews are on-target. The firewall is extremely highly configurable, easy to manipulate, and a bear to bypass. There are settings for nearly everything - setting ranges of IP addresses and ports to filter out, high/medium/low settings via sliders to define general behavior, and program access not unlike that found in NIS. Access to the settings is done through a dialog that is easy on the eyes and laid out in a very logical and clear manner. There should be no problem finding anything you need to find in the interface.

The alerts that the firewall sends are glaring and unmistakable, so that if there is some kind of activity you want to know about, you cannot help but know about it. With a button click you can dismiss the alerts, and if you are tired of them you can tell the firewall to be quiet and the alerts get toned down.

Program access to the internet is done in a manner similar to that of NIS, where each program is handled individually. This can be configured to be automatic, or it can be done on a case-by-case basis via manual action. The choice is yours.

If you're daring and you know what you're doing you can even establish your own custom rulesets for the firewall.

The other primary feature, the antivirus, is based on Computer Associate's scanner engine, and it seamlessly integrates into the package without trouble. While not especially fast at scanning, this antivirus actually lets me run scans in the background while I do other things. Granted, I wouldn't want to load up Doom3 or something like that while running a viral scan, but opening an app or two and doing a little work while the virus checker merrily does its thing is not a big deal. Sure, it slows down the other processes, but it doesn't completely kill the box like McAfee, Norton or Trend do.

The antivirus does have the ability to check email (inbound and outbound) for infection, and the base settings are simply on or off. Further controls allow for handling of attachments based on file extension.

There are several minor features of this firewall, some of them useful and some needing a little refinement. One of the nice features is a parental control facility. The configuration of such is very straightforward - on/off via radio buttons. There are many categories to choose from when deciding what to block or allow, and this list is straightforward. Once set, it is quite efficient and is independent of browser choice. It appears to rely on a lookup server as opposed to keeping a local copy of the list - this may or may not bother you, so consider this when enabling this feature.

One of the less refined features is the ad blocking, which hides in the privacy settings. I have found that it does not do as nice a job at blocking banner ads as I would hope and it lets a few slip through. This may improve down the road, but for now I personally am a little disappointed.

ZSS2005 has the ability to secure instant messaging transmissions as well. However, it requires that the person with whom you are communicating also have ZSS2005. Otherwise, everything stays unencrypted. This does make sense.

There is a setting for blocking spam, but this is misleading. The spam to which this setting refers is unsolicited instant messages, not email. There is apparently no email antispam functionality in this suite, which is something a lot of other packages offer, even if the feature is typically limited in scope. If you already have an antispam solution, great. If not, do not expect ZSS2005 to be of much help.

ZSS2005 is a nearly comprehensive solution that does a good job protecting your system while connected to the internet. It is fast enough to satisfy, it has a small footprint in memory, and is very light on resources. Although it is a newcomer on the internet security suite market, this one is absolutely worth a look. It has a good balance of power, speed and price.

I have had this software for about 2 months now, and here are the important points:
PROS:
1- Firewall, anti-virus, email junk and virus monitoring, web filtering, parental control, ID lock, vault, IM security, and program control.
2- GREAT firewall.
3- GREAT email junk monitoring.
4- Does not use too many resources.
5- easy to understand and setup most of the options.

CONS:
I think this is what everyone is looking for the cons so here I go:

1- Lousy virus protection:
I say this from experience, I subscribe to many newsgroups and I use outlook to get my mail (pop), I was using Zone Alarm (ZA) for email junk filter as well as the sole virus protection on my system. It caught couple of viruses in the first couple of weeks. It was also updating it's virus definitions regularly (auto). then a while later I noticed that the Homepage on my browser had changed, as well as my computer being a bit off. So I did an online virus check with Symantec (Norton) and it found 3 viruses on my system. I wrote there locations down and then did a manual virus update to my ZA and asked it to check the specific folders where the viruses were found. Zone alarm came back with nothing, it did not detect them. So I turned ZA antivirus off, and installed my old but still great Norton Anti Virus 2002 ( I like this one because it uses less resources than the 2005 version). Updated the definitions and scanned. It came up with 9 . YES 9 infected files (3 unique viruses). and from then on, I opted on keeping Norton on the side of ZA (which I now had the anti virus option off)

2- Sometimes the installation will not go as smoothly as it should. Yet this is easily corrected by uninstalling and re-installing.

3- the junk e-mail monitoring of ZA for outlook sometimes goes off with no prior warning (the zone alarm buttons on outlook will disappear). I have not yet discovered why this happened (only once for me). I re-installed ZA and now it has been working for the past month.

4- The privacy controls (cookie monitoring and Ad blocking) are not very easy to tune. What I mean by that is that when you activate these controls, you will in many times be not allowed on certain websites. I guess I just did not have the patience to tune them yet.

5- Does not work with all pop mail programs. I know that It does work with outlook and outlook express, but as for others please check carefully.

Summery:
In MY opinion this is a great product. Yet I give it 3 stars mainly because of it's lousy virus protection and some insatiability with it's web filtering (junk mail blocking). Yet I still think this is one if not THE best all in one security available at the moment. It uses much less resources than any of the TOP internet securities, and it is far more stable. I also like that it DOES NOT conflict with other virus protection (Norton 2002 in my case) IF you opt to turn it's virus protection off. Actually it keeps an eye on your other program's virus definitions and alerts you if they are outdated. At the price that Amazon is selling this product at (rebate of $30) I would give it 4 stars.

Layth

After going insane with the new version of Norton Systemworks 2005, which doesn't even install, I decided to finally swear off all Symantec products.

I have used Zone Alarm Pro for some time. It's not perfect, but it certainly will protect your computer. I took the plunge and went with the full security suite this week, and I've been relatively happy.

On the plus side, the software works really well. The personal firewall is better than any you can find, and the virus protection found a phishing app that Norton had not (before I had unstalled it).

On the minus side, the firewall can be problematic. I've had page load issues on Ebay and on my own site which has a cgi script to keep my images and files from being hotlinked (bandwidth theft). When I visit my site or any other that has a similar anti-theft cgi script, the images simply won't come up. Ebay gets all messed up as well. I haven't been able to figure out a setting that works, so I have to turn off the firewall on Ebay and a few other sites, which kind of defeats the purpose of a firewall. This doesn't happen a lot though, so it's not annoying enough to get my dander up.

All in all it's been a far better investment than Symantec products, so despite its limitations I would recommend this program. It does have a lot of options to set, but they are pretty easy to get through if you are computer literate.

If you decide to go with this program and you currently have Norton Antivirus, you will need to uninstall Norton before this program will run.

If you were to ask me if I preferred Symantec Systemworks or Zone Alarm Security Suite, there would be absolutely no hesitation in recommending Zone Alarm.

Norton and Mcafee only update virus definitions ! Zone alarm product not only update deinitions, but also update you with a complete program when a new version is relesed. It also now has a spam filter that also allows you to not only to control spam and to report it to them as junk mail or fraudulent email so they can constantly improve the spam filter. The entire security suite has virus protection and Instant messanger protection with encryption. Also you get a site filter to avoid unwanted sites. You can also send challengers to unwanted email automatically. I started with just the freeware version and it out performed McAfee and Norton. So I purchased Zonealarm Pro then upgraded to the whole suite. The geotracking for hackers is more accurate and it blocks hackers allowing you to trace them fairly well. I had 1 hacker sucsefully shut down. Also the have a cache cleaner and online feature that nails all the tracking cookies then the main program cleans them out. They sell a separate program that prevent 98% of spyware from getting into your system and when you run it gets what slipped thru. Made Adaware and Spybot look sick. Some days I get new definition files 2-3 times a day, rather than 1 time a week. Since I renewed my subscition in August I have received 5 program updates. Also you can truly surf totally anonymous if you choose to do so. You can share your security setting with Zonealarm if you want to.(anonymously if you want) After seeing how well it works on my system some of my friends swithed over as well as my doctor. He had patient records hack with McAfee but not with Zonealarm. I really deserves more than 5 stars.

As a user of Norton/Symantec products for the last 10 years it was difficult to make the change, but I finally got fed up with the unintuitive bloated Norton resource hog and made the switch to the Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Security Suite. So far, I am very pleased with my purchase. I feel like I am back in charge of my firewall, and my PC is running more nimbly these days with 5 fewer processes running in the background.

There is very little I can add to the excellent review by Amazon user Matthew Morgan as I agree in general with his assessment of the ZSS strengths and weaknesses. I bought it primarily as a firewall and anti-virus solution, and this is where the real strengths of the product lie. The firewall is very customizible, yet can be simplified enough that my un-tech wife can administer it when the need arises. I especially have confidence in the virus scanner after it picked up a trojan on its first scan that Norton had missed weekly for months.

Sure ad and pop up blocking could be better but I use Firefox with its integrated pop up blocker, and coupled with Firefox's excellent and free Adblock extension I don't need any help in this area. Similarly I already rely on the integrated spam blocking in Firefox's companion email client Thunderbird, so any ZSS weaknesses in this area are not an issue for me either. If you are serious about stopping popups and blocking ads start by ditching Internet Explorer and Outlook/Express, then you will have less of a need for these kinds of features yourself.

Lastly, I would like to respond to another reviewer's recommendation of using a router firewall in place of this kind of client based software firewall. You absolutely should use a router with a firewall enabled, but that is only half the battle as it will only give you inbound protection from port-scanning script kiddies. A router NAT firewall does NOTHING to protect you from Trojans you invite onto your machine via emails and downloaded files you execute, nor will it stop these Trojans from masquarading as legit programs with unlimited outbound access. So yes, use your router firewall, but ALWAYS in conjuction with a good software based firewall on all your clients. A good software based firewall like Zone Labs ZoneAlarm Security Suite!

Windows Firewall does not block outgoing connections. Check this using leaktest at www.grc.com.

"Just so you know, WinXP's built-in firewall does not attempt to manage or restrict outbound connections at all. It appears to be a useful firewall for hiding the machine from the Internet (it has "stealth mode" unsolicited packet handling), but you will still need to use a good third-party personal firewall if you wish to manage and control outbound connections from your system." Quoted from the GRC website.

I tested it myself. Zonealarm did block this whereas XP did not. This means that when my wife clicked on an IM virus, it was blocked by Zonealarm instead of sending out copies to all of her friends and email acquintances. With only XP, the virus would have spread.

I have used the Zonlabs Firewall for several years. It works fine. I can not say the same for the Security Suite. The AntiSpam function does not update definitions and ZoneLabs Tech Support know they have a problem. They are working on it but no date for a fix.
Do not buy this software until all the bugs are fixed.

This software installed just fine. Our biggest beef is that we don't know what it's doing behind the scenes. The logs are pitifully thin. On a daily basis, our system "goes to sleep", and we're convinced it's due to ZA doing something behind the scenes. On a number of occasions, the Anti-Virus sweep has kicked off in the middle of a busy day, instead of running at its appointed time of 1:30 AM, when we're asleep. And many of the configuration screens where you can click boxes don't have enough information (for this novice, anyway) to make an informed decision about whether "to check or not to check". It seems to be less intrusive the Norton, but less intuitive, too. We just want to know what it is doing on our behalf, and the logs sure don't tell any stories.

Great software! Until You have a question or a problem that is. Then You get the run around BIG TIME! ZoneAlarm says they didn't sell it to me so they can't help me. They send me to Broderbund for help. Broderbund then sends me to Encore for help and they won't help me either. ZoneAlarm states if I didn't buy it right from ZoneAlarm then they don't give any support.
It comes in a ZoneAlarm box, says ZoneAlarm on the CD but apparently it isn't ZoneAlarm??? (According to ZoneAlarm that is)!!
Buy it elsewhere, or end up helpless!!!

When I first received the product and installed it I had a few configuration issues (not unusual) but now, after 8 months of service, they are telling me I need to purchase an upgrade ($69.99) or I will have no virus protection. I contacted Customer Service (what a misnomer) as no one was available to actually speak to me and the automated system was like one of those automated phone loops you enter when trying to contact any company. I finally gave up and an now shopping for a newer and more reliable antivirus and protection system. I did not get a full year of service, got jerked around and have lost all faith in this software package. I wish any other users good luck!