“Total Security” – is a bold claim. BitDefender's security products have long been a security geek's delight, with lots of features. Unfortunately, last year's product turned toward the mainstream, with a simple big-button user interface. However, all configuration details are still accessible for those who can understand them. And this version adds a lot of new features to the suite's collection.

 

Without 2GB of online backup space you can save some money by getting BitDefender Internet Security 2009 at $49.95 for three licenses instead. The more licenses you purchase, the less is the price per license.

Interface

The suite's new look offers a "dashboard" that shows overall status. The dashboard offers not one but two buttons to fix all issues. Clicking either brings up a list of items wchich can be fixed individually or all at once, just like with Norton Internet Security 2008 and Kaspersky Internet Security 2009. A list of tasks lets you check for updates or run a full or deep scan.

Security tab is subdivided into four areas: local security, online security, parental control, and vulnerability scan. Tune-up tab gives access to a variety of tools for system clean-up and performance settings. The File Manager provides access to the file vault and to local and online backup. Network tab allows remote monitoring and configuration across the network.

A help panel at the bottom offers information about whatever control you're pointing at as you move the mouse around the main window. Some of the actions launched by the rest of controls are slow to appear.

Virus Protection and Malware Removal

BitDefender's antivirus mostly gets high rating positions from independent testing labs. However, BitDefender Antivirus failed to collect Virus Bulletin's VB100% award twice this year in spite of the fact that both West Coast Labs and ICSA Labs certify it for virus detection and removal. It was rated as “Advanced” by AV-Comparatives for signature-based detection but only Standard (the lowest passing grade) for proactive non-signature detection.

The combined antivirus/antispyware scan checks files on access, on demand, and on schedule. You may schedule a Quick, Full, Deep, or Custom scan to run at system start-up or at any interval from minutes to months. There is an automatic scanning feature available that offers to scan devices attached to your PC when you plug in a USB drive, insert a CD, or connect to a mapped network drive.

BitDefender IS 2009 was installed on a virtual-machine heavily loaded with all kind of threats we had in our disposal (spyware, adware, Trojans, worms, rootkits, and fake antispyware utilities). The installation was a breeze. A full scan took more than half an hour, which is pretty slow, but the subsequent scans were faster because unchanged files are not scanned again.

During the scan the program disinfects, quarantines, or deletes certain high-risk items and leaves low-risk and failed-to-clean items for the user's disposition. You can choose to disinfect, quarantine, or delete these remaining items. Sometimes it takes two or even three tries to get every item either cleaned or marked as "No action is possible". In almost every test system there were one or more items that the program couldn't fix. Also, a couple of the systems lost network connectivity after the scan. And three of them required Windows reactivation after cleaning—that's rather alarming! The repeated scans wiped out a few more threats, which was quite confusing.

Even after all that manual labor and multiple scans, BitDefender's performance was poor. It missed a couple of the threats totally and failed to fully remove about a 20% of those detected. Also, it completely missed several and failed to remove others commercial keyloggers used in a separate test. Admittedly, none of the products do as well on this test as they do against actual malware.

Within a couple of minutes, BitDefender eliminated over 60 percent of the same set of malware samples from installing. Other threats were deleted when they were highlighted within the Windows Explorer window. Modified files were successfully deleted as well. BitDefender's signature-based scanning is clearly flexible enough to handle these variations.

But the program didn't do so well with threats that survived long enough to launch. It completely missed one of these and failed to successfully block half of the rest. Successful blocking means that it prevented the malware from installing any executable files. In this case two of the threats were actually running despite BitDefender's efforts. The results were good (8.7 points of 10) but eight other products scored better on this same test. Kaspersky managed 9.6, and PC Tools's ThreatFire blocked every sample for a perfect 10 of 10.

Firewall

BitDefender's firewall pops up a message asking the user whether to allow the program the first time a program attempts Internet access. However the number of pop-ups is minimal. It pre-configures access without asking and allows access for any digitally signed application automatically. The rest of the software is scanned for viruses are recommended for network access after. The weak point is that when the program is not recognized as malicious, the firewall recommends it for network access even if the program in fact is associated with malware.

A dozen of leak-test utilities were tried and BitDefender blocked two-thirds of the tests strictly by detecting their sneaky tricks. That's a big improvement over last year. The firewall was also effective at hiding the test system from outside attack. It put all ports in stealth mode, making them invisible from the Internet. The firewall reported that it had blocked a port-scan attack when the web-based port-scan tests were run. It also successfully blocked all exploits generated using the Impact penetration testing tool from Core Security Technologies. As always, some of the exploits failed simply because the target system was no longer vulnerable. BitDefender's intrusion detection system blocked some exploits. It detected others as known malware.

The firewall self-protection works great. We were unable to shut it down by tweaking Registry settings or kill its essential processes or stop its essential services. This firewall is seriously tamper-proof.

Spam Protection

BitDefender's antispam filters POP3 e-mail accounts and can be integrated with Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Mozilla Thunderbird. For other clients you'll have to define a rule to divert messages with "[spam]" or "[phishing]" in the header into a spam folder. Unlike Kaspersky, this utility won't handle Exchange-based or IMAP accounts. Supported e-mail clients get a useful toolbar that lets you mark any message as spam or not spam, add the sender to the Friends or Spammers list, manage those lists, and access antispam settings.

BitDefender tech support sent over a diagnostic utility. On analyzing its logs the techs identified the problem and supplied a patch. You shouldn't see this problem because the developers have incorporated the patch into the product itself. Whew! I proceeded to run the antispam training wizard and then deleted the messages I had used in training. I also emptied the Friends and Spammers lists, since my aim is to test the product's ability to recognize spam without regard to its source.

The messages are coming in rather slowly with spam filtering disabled. The process took 5 to 6 times as long with filtering turned on! By default, the filter puts spam messages in the Deleted Items folder which is pretty riskybut the option can be turned off or modified in order to create a rule and a separate folder for messages in question.

10,000 messages were let into the e-mail program from three real-world e-mail accounts. For some reason phishing messages went into the Inbox with the header marked as [phishing]. Antispam feature did let about 30 percent of definite junk into the Inbox, but further training would probably reduce that amount. The most important consideration is that it won't discard your valid mail. It's a good effort, but, nevertheless, the performance is poor if compared with community-based spam filters like Cloudmark, iHateSpam, and SPAMfighter, which let only about 2 percent of spam into the Inbox.

Private Filter

BitDefender includes a Private Filter that prevents transmission of specified personal information via Web forms, e-mail, or instant messaging (specifically Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger). It strips private data out of e-mail or IM messages and completely blocks Web forms containing private data.

A wizard helps to setup the filter and lets you specify whether each element should be blocked in Web forms, e-mail, IM, or all three. BitDefender encrypts the chosen data and never displays it again. This feature can be used as a kind of phishing protection by adding the passwords of your financial sites as private data items and then adding the actual sites to the list of exceptions.

It blocks private data in Web forms no matter what browser is used and in SMTP e-mail no matter what the e-mail client. The drawback is that if you use a third-party instant messenger like Trillian your private data won't be filtered. The IM-blocking feature works only in the supported IM clients.
BitDefender watches the Web sites you visit in Internet Explorer or Firefox and pops up a warning if you heading for a fraudulent site. It also checks URLs received through Yahoo! Messenger or Windows Live Messenger. Internet Explorer 7 blocked almost 60 percent of the verified fraudulent sites, and Firefox got 55 percent. But BitDefender blocked almost 90 percent of the verified phishing URLs compared with 85 percent showed by Norton.

Parental Control

Parental control is awkward. The main display lists all user accounts on the system and indicates whether five specific features are enabled or disabled. But in the cramped grid displayed, spotting the difference between "enabled" and "disabled" isn't easy—a little color coding would help.
Three parental control features are initially turned on: Web control, application control, and Web time limiter. Web control blocks access to a few thousand bad sites. Application control blocks access to applications you specify, and the kids can't fake it out by renaming or copying a blocked program. Web time limiter defines when each user is allowed on the Internet. Tweaking the system time can’t trick the limiter, and the parental-control features are browser-independent.

A keyword filtering option prevents access to any Web page, e-mail message, or IM containing the keywords you specify. You can configure the product to block instant messages (only Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger) from specific contacts, or to limit IM to a defined list of approved contacts. Parental-control system provides the possibility to keep children away from inappropriate web sites only with heuristic web filter enabled, which has three settings: Child, Teenager, and Adult. But the system seems to block a lot more than it should. With the heuristic filtering turned off, the product won't block inappropriate Web sites. With it turned on, it will block tons of valid sites. If you want category-based filtering of inappropriate Internet destinations, turn off this feature and get a real stand-alone parental-control program like Net Nanny 5.6.

Backup

BitDefender's local backup is similar to the last year's model. A wizard helps to define data file locations, the entire hard drive, or anything in between to be backed up. Next, a backup location must be chosen: a local folder, USB drive, network drive, writable CD/DVD or even an FTP server. Backup can be scheduled or just run once. The restoration procedure is just as simple.

Advanced View opens a full-scale backup utility that can define and schedule multiple backup jobs, restore backed-up files to a specific day and time, and even run a particular program before or after the backup. You can define a backup job that copies all files of a given type regardless of location—that's something the wizard won't do. Online backup works in the background, automatically. First backup takes quite a while; after, only changed files are backed up. By default, the program checks for changes in files every hour, however, longer time periods can be set.

Network Management

Network management allows remote monitoring and controlling of all BitDefender-equipped systems in the network. Network-management menu offers a set of scan options such as full scan, deep scan, or a minimal scan (specified folder) on any or all of the remote computers. Remote control provides the possibility to trigger an update, defragment the remote computer, or clear its browser cache. Moreover, the detailed statistics of all monitored actions on the remote computer is available - viruses deleted, spam filtered and Web sites blocked by parental control.

Performance

To measure the changes in system performance we ran a number scripts capable of measuring the time required to perform various common actions a security suite might affect. The same actions were accomplished without the suit installed

There was a considerable difference in the time required to boot the system. Boot time averaged a minute on a clean system and doubled after BitDefender had been installed (Kaspersky added just 15 percent to boot time, for example).
Phishing protection and network traffic monitoring added around 40 percent to the time required to load a webpage (Kaspersky added over 60 percent). Moving and copying a large number of files took about 25 percent longer with BitDefender installed. There was no appreciable effect on the time required to perform a collection of complex audio format conversions.

The timed test of zipping and unzipping files showed the most interesting result. Under Kaspersky this process took about a 25 percent longer, the same as basic file copying. But under BitDefender it took almost two and a half times as long. Let's not forget that the spam filter slowed e-mail downloading by a factor of 5 or 6 - that's a performance hit. On the plus side, the antivirus scanner speeds up significantly on repeated scans because it limits scanning of unchanged files.

Conclusion

The performance test showed very average result if compared to other products. The high price and mediocre performance do not allow BitDefender Total Security 2009 to become a top-level product this year. However, taking into account all those new features in the 2009 suite - online backup, remote configuration, and the file vault, to name a few – it is still a valuable option.