Labs

BullGuard combines an anti-virus scanner with a backup service, a firewall and an anti-spam filter. It combines everything in one interface, which has been improved since the previous version, reviewed in the June 2005 issue.

Application protection was noisy, alerting you to regular events that it admits are harmless. You may find it interesting to see an alert that says Internet Explorer and the NDIS User mode I/O Driver have been granted access to the internet,

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but most won't. Such alerts are distracting and pointless.

The anti-virus settings are comprehensive, and scheduling scans is simple. Enabling and disabling email scanning and excluding certain file types from scanning is straightforward. This is also one of the few programs that provides a useful progress bar during scanning. Some, including Norton AntiVirus, just display an animation that gives no indication of how close the scan is to completion.

When we reviewed its virus-detecting abilities we were disappointed that it missed a rootkit and three Trojans. It did catch the regular viruses, the most likely threats to come down your internet connection, but we expect decent anti-virus software to prevent Trojans. It claims to detect unknown viruses, but we'll wait until it detects known ones before believing that.

Combine this poor protection with an annual renewal price that is joint highest with Norton AntiVirus, and the deal looks unattractive. We'd rather not use an internet security package that lacks a strong anti-virus element.