Trend Micro PC-cillin - Overdue for a Checkup (and a Diet)

During the installation, the TrendMicro installer offers to install optional online components that help prevent phishing attacks. During installation, TrendMicro also detected a suspicious change to the computer's settings. Unfortunately, it was TrendMicro's installer that made the change. I would expect that the TrendMicro scanners would be aware of the TrendMicro install changes and approve them without warning.

When the installation completed, I was asked to reboot the computer. Upon reboot, I had lost connection on my primary network card. Trend Micro's security package promptly warned me that I didn't have network connectivity and that this posed a security risk.

I discovered that Trend Micro attempted to install a firewall miniport (a network device driver, or software that manages your network connection) that failed. I disabled the miniport and rebooted. This did not help. Finally, I uninstalled the network card and the miniport and reinstalled the network card and was able to get my network card to work. This was a horrible user experience.

The software also writes about 330MB to the file system, and creates about 1921 registry entries. The software can be removed by rerunning setup; uninstalling by re-running the installer left about 288MB of data on the disk but removed all the registry entries.

After the installation, PC-cillin popped up a message box that indicated that installation was not complete until I registered the software. It (falsely) indicated that registration was necessary in in order to keep the computer protected with the latest updates. At one point the pop-up was on the screen at the same time PC-cillin was downloading updates. Clearing the pop-up window with the close button would not dismiss it for good. In fact I was not able to find a way to keep the registration pop-up from displaying at regular intervals. I noted that when the pop-up displayed, it interrupted music I was playing through that computer. This registration bullying produced a very frustrating user experience. I was able to register using bogus information and that seems to have corrected the problem.

PC-cillin includes many of the same features as Trend Micro's entry package, but does include some added functionality that is probably worth the extra ten dollars--the firewall and the online features.

PC-cillin comes with a firewall that fully integrates with Window's Security Center. Windows correctly detects when the firewall has been turned off and on and produces warnings when the firewall is no longer protecting your computer. It also is possible to download updates to PC-cillin through the Security Center interface, though it is not possible to modify firewall settings from the Windows Security Center interface.

The firewall is robust. It is aware of breaches and alerts the user to programs attempting to use the computer's network connection. Many security packages use pop-up windows for alerts. Trend Micro shows firewall alerts in a dialog box where you're able to work through each item in the list and grant trusted permission to allowable items. Once an item is trusted, it will no longer prompt the alert dialog to appear. Some added niceties include a feature that allows you to view all IP addresses connected to your router and an option to scan the other computers on your network for viruses and malware.

PC-cillin also comes with email security options and a phishing filter. "Phishing," for the uninitiated, is a type of scam where a website appears to be that of a legitimate company (e.g. your bank), but is actually a bogus site put up by a person attempting to get your personal information. The mail protection feature also includes data theft protection--a service designed to monitor your instant messaging, email, and web browsing and warn you if personal information is about to be transferred. In the event that you're about to transfer your credit card information via email, for example, PC-cillin will ask for your permission before the transfer is allowed. You also can set up an approved recipient list so that you don't have to approve data transfers for people or services you know and use regularly.

The help and support features of PC-cillin are top notch. It is at the top of the list of security packages I've tested.

I ran some non-scientific tests to evaluate whether the scanning software would cause some obvious and immediate problems with basic tasks like browsing the Web and copying files. I wrote a small software program that would precisely time these operations. I ran a first set of tests without the software installed and running, and a second set with VirusScan Plus running in the background with all scanners turned on. For the first test, I copied five 21MB files over my home network from the local machine (on which AntiVirus would be installed) to a network share. The second test copied 300 8K files over the network. I was testing to see if smaller files, and more of them, would affect the scanners negatively. Finally, my program went to five major websites (with complex layouts) and downloaded their home pages. I ran each test five times. Here are the results:

No Scanners
Large files: 15561 ms
Small files: 3789 ms
Web sites: 5862 ms

Scanners
Large files: 15853 ms
Small files: 8687 ms
Websites: 6775 ms

The performance differences between the tests is minor but, not unexpectedly, its clear that having the scanners on does affect latency in each area. The most noteworthy impact is in the second test, where I copied multiple smaller files over the network. The time it took to copy the files with the scanners running more than doubled. These differences may not be terribly significant in an isolated test like this, but the time lag will add up--and most likely be noticeable--over time if you do a lot of file-intensive tasks on your computer.

With everything running, the PC-cillin memory footprint came to a whopping 175MB. Users with limited memory resources should take note before making a purchasing decision.