Labs

Moscow-based software security developer Kaspersky Labs has carved out a very profitable niche in the anti-virus market, and is a well-known and highly respected global authority in the anti-virus field. It shouldn't be too surprising to see it getting a foot in the firewall door, as consolidation of security products is inevitable and the 'all you can eat' approach has already proved popular for market rivals Norton and McAfee.

Kaspersky prides itself on ease of use, and installation of Anti-Hacker seemed almost too quick to be true. Hardly any user input was required, although we would have preferred an option for an in-depth application scan at this stage to save us the time of having to add applications one at a time later. Once installed, though, you can dig deeper if you want to, and there's plentiful guidance available to ensure you make the right

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configuration decisions.

For our testing, we left all the firewalls at their default levels. In the case of Kaspersky, this was a medium protection range that resulted in a flood of pop-up windows offering the option to allow or block application access to the outside world. Luckily, these pop-ups were well constructed, providing enough detail to help the advanced user (port number, type of communication being requested), while at the same time not too much to confuse the inexperienced. Help was at hand to aid the choice, and block/accept calls can be made as one-offs if required.

For those who like to dig deeper, we rather liked the drop-down lists offering to allow the application access by type rather than using terminology most people wouldn't understand. Clarity of choice and ease of understanding are two of the most important weapons in a firewall's arsenal - without them, it's too easy to confuse people and leave holes in their defences. By asking if you want to allow an application to access the Internet in the way that a standard Instant Messenger or web browser client would, there's less chance of misunderstanding.

But what impressed us the most about Kaspersky was that despite its simple interface and the lack of user intervention needed, it sailed through the tests. Sure, it's not as complex or all encompassing as some, but it's this simplicity and focus on the main task at hand that make it such a great product.