Labs

Platinum 2005 Internet Security combines a firewall and anti-virus software with some extra features. What some of these do is obvious from the name, such as the anti-spam filter. Others, such as Protection against fraud and Protection against unknown threats, need explaining.

The fraud protection is an anti-phishing feature that warns you when you receive an email message intended to direct you to a fake website. The unknown threat protection detects virus-like behaviour and aims to stop previously undiscovered viruses. Having configured these options, you can lock

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them away from other users with a password.

The firewall is relatively simple to use and provides application control as well as a set of configurable firewall rules. When we set up the IIS software, Panda's firewall allowed people on the internet to access the mail and FTP services as well as the web server. To solve this problem you need to add three firewall rules, one to allow incoming HTTP (web) traffic and two to deny access to the SMTP and FTP ports.

The anti-virus component is the same software that's supplied with Panda's standalone anti-virus program, Titanium Antivirus. When we tested this in Shopper, February 2005 it missed some of our test Trojan files. This latest release also allowed them to run and infect the system. The firewall reduces the risk of an attacker controlling your PC remotely, but it's not nice to know that these files, which most anti-virus programs detect, can get on your system. If nothing else they might affect performance.

In the past we've criticised Panda's internet security products for being more expensive and less effective than the competition. This holds true for Platinum 2005 Internet Security.