Review of Kaspersky Internet Security 2020

I installed a trial version of Kaspersky Internet Security to see whether I'd be happy to use it long term. This blog post goes over my experience using the product and what I like/dislike so far.

Kaspersky

Kaspersky Lab, founded by Eugene Kaspersky, is a Russian-based cybersecurity firm focusing on antivirus/anti-malware solutions for businesses and home users. Their antivirus solutions receive quite a lot of praise and are positively reviewed on tech sites. Despite consistently receiving very strong reviews and having reportedly excellent results against malware, Kaspersky Lab does receive some negative reviews based solely on the fact that the company is headquartered in Russia and user data is stored in their Russian-based data centers (this isn't true for European customers: their data is kept and processed in data centers in Zurich, Switzerland). The Russian aspect of the company has been enough of a reason for US government agencies to discontinue use of Kaspersky products, given concerns about potential Russian government ties to Kaspersky Lab. It's unclear whether any of these allegations are true and perhaps we'll never know. As with most things in the world of security, it largely comes down to how much you as a consumer are willing to trust these corporations.

Kaspersky Internet Security App

After installing Kaspersky Internet Security the application auto-updated its virus/malware definitions. I then chose to run a full system scan, which took quite some time to complete. Shown below is the main application window (the scary "1 warning" text is referring to the fact that I'm using a trial version and haven't purchased a full version of the product yet). It's from this interface that you can choose to initiate scans, update definitions, access various security tools, and change settings.

Features and Tools

Aside from the obvious functionality of on-demand and real-time scanning (apparently also performing rootkit scans at least once a day), the application includes quite a few tools that turned out to be very useful. Overall I was quite impressed with the package: the combination of tools all seem to work together to reduce the chance my PC would be in danger of being infected or subject to an attack. Shown below is a screenshot of the app with the various tools tabs: Security, My Network, Manage applications, Clean and optimize.

The first option shown above in the "Security" tab is "Cloud Protection". Making use of this requires opting in to the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN) and provides users with real-time detection to malware as it is detected in the wild. Unusual behavior or activity detected by the Kaspersky app will be sent to the cloud for analysis and can thus be used to help protect you and others that use the service. As cool as that all sounds (and it does sound very cool!), opting in requires uploading a significant amount of data about your computer and agreeing to have data sampled and uploaded on a fairly regular basis. I suppose this is supposed to be anonymized data but here I'd have to trust that the data is handled correctly. Also, this data protection page lists out the types of data that can be sampled and uploaded, and it's pretty substantial in my opinion. Given that, I've opted not to be part of Kaspersky Security Network and am not benefiting from cloud protection. That's a pity, I suppose, given that it is a major feature with powerful real-time protection. I just can't bring myself to fully trust the company with all that data right now. Maybe I'll change my mind later.

The second tab, "My network", has a network monitor as well as a feature called "Secure Connection", which is essentially a VPN provided by Kaspersky Lab. Unfortunately, out of the box the VPN limits you to 200MB of usage a day. You can increase this but that requires purchasing a much more expensive package. I'd probably just end up using a separate, dedicated VPN service.

The next tab, "Manage applications", has a few very interesting tools.

The "Software Updater" tool scans your PC for installed applications and then reports which of these have updates available for installation. It can even be configured to auto-update your applications as soon as an update is available. As you likely know, cybercriminals take advantage of security vulnerabilities in outdated applications and one of the best (and easiest) things you can do to protect yourself is to ensure your applications are up-to-date. With so many apps installed on a PC, it's easy to forget to look for updates for all applications. The first time I ran this it reported that two applications, Gpg4win and 7-zip, were out of date and suggested links to update them. This was amazing since I hadn't thought to look for updates for these two apps in quite some time (and could easily have forgotten they were installed).

The "Vulnerability Scan" tool can check for common operating system and application vulnerabilities. This turned up some interesting suggestions such as suggesting to turn off autorun support from external hard drives or USB devices, a very sensible suggestion.

The last tab is the "Clean and optimize" tab which has a few tools specific for cleaning up (read: removing) unnecessary or rarely run applications as well as a "Privacy Cleaner" tool for removing traces of activity (removing browser cookies, and such).

All in all, I found the suite of tools to be fairly comprehensive and I was impressed by the value they added. Sure, there were a few I didn't want to use such as Kaspersky Cloud, the VPN service, or the password manager (more on that later), but the rest that I did choose proved to be quite useful. I see Kaspersky Internet Security as far more than just an anti-malware scanner; it's also a tool that helps users proactively improve the security of their PCs to reduce the chance of having to deal with malware in the first place.

Lastly, the application has a "Reports" pane with details about when last certain types of scans were performed, what was scanned, when last the database was updated, and a number of other useful stats.

Annoyances

So far I painted a picture of the app being super useful, and for the most part it is. However, it wasn't without a few grievances that I'll briefly touch on here.

Understandably, given that the software is security-focused, the app occasionally encourages you to enable and make use of some of the tools that come as part of the Kaspersky Internet Security package. This makes sense especially since users may not be aware of all the tools that are available and also because these features are intended to help the user reduce risk and be more protected.

Unfortunately, some of the recommendations do end up being quite annoying. Throughout the trial period I was reminded on several occasions to install the Kaspersky password manager (two such reminder dialogs are shown in screenshots below). One of the reminder dialogs even had the "Install Kaspersky Password Manager" option pre-selected which I felt was a bit heavy-handed. I think the suggestions are reasonable, but asking multiple times after I've already made my choice clear before (that I don't want to install it!) is a bit much.

 

The app also reminded me on a daily basis that the trial period was limited, indicating how many days were remaining, and strongly suggesting to purchase the product to remain protected. The daily reminders were somewhat helpful since I did want to know when the trial would be over. Perhaps they had the desired effect because I was looking forward to a future where I wouldn't have to see nag reminders to purchase the full product.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Excellent suite of tools that help shore up security holes.
• Great scanning options allowing control over what's scanned, frequency, etc. Rootkit scanning is a great feature. The quick scan option completes reasonably quickly.
• Privacy protection and safe banking options are great additions. The safe banking feature is an interesting one: a separate browser instance is created which is monitored by Kaspersky to ensure that other applications are unable to inject code into the browser. When this feature is used the browser is surrounded by a teal color.
• Minimal impact on system resources from what I could tell. Definitely no discernible impact using the computer (I could continue browsing the web and using the computer), even when scans were run. Also, auto scans were not run when playing games.

Cons:

• Slow full scans. Perhaps it can't be helped, but it seemed to me that running a full system scan took a very long time.
• Annoying reminders to use certain tools, such as the password manager, and to purchase the non-trial version of the product.
• Data stored and processed in Russia (for customers outside of Europe). Now, maybe this isn't a big deal. But it's certainly in the back of my mind as a customer and was enough of a deterrent that I chose not to use the KSN.

Conclusion

Having used this for about a month so far I can say that I'm pretty happy with the package by Kaspersky. One of the concerns I read about in some online reviews was that the app is a bit resource heavy (compared to some other antivirus solutions) but I haven't found that to be the case (and my computer is several years old at this point).

Kaspersky Internet Security provides a very comprehensive cybersecurity product that makes me feel that my PC is safer than before. I can easily recommend the product over the default Windows Defender that comes with Windows 10. That said, I am currently still not making use of all that the application suite has to offer, specifically I'm not enrolled in the Kaspersky Security Network to take full advantage of their cloud real-time security feature. Maybe I'm being paranoid (and maybe the Russian aspect of the company has a little to do with this) but I'm personally not comfortable with giving so much data to this company at this point in time.

I feel quite comfortable saying this is a really great product and can easily recommend it, especially over many other antivirus solutions. I do plan to try out a few other antivirus solutions before fully committing to one, but so far Kaspersky seems to provide a strong contender.