Stops viruses, Trojans, adware, spyware and other malware from infecting your computer. Guards against phishing schemes and other type of Internet attacks. Protects your online interactions with banks and stores.
Kaspersky Internet Security has always been popular for its functionality and general reliability. This online protection solution is regularly supported and updated so that it never becomes obsolete or useless.
I find it very appealing that the developers don't pretend to give you anything they can't provide. Kaspersky Internet Security openly shares basic functionality, design and interface with its regular counterpart, Kaspersky Antivirus. However, instead of pretending to be something completely different while having the same features, this software actually does something new. The scanning and threat elimination works as usual, but the firewall has been seriously buffed up, and the program even goes deeper into boot protection, starting processes very early on so that no threats slips past the defense. Resulting level of protection is basically the best in the market by most accounts, and Kaspersky's effectiveness has become self-evident long ago.
Kaspersky Internet Security has extended functionality going beyond a standard antivirus. It includes a great spam filter working with email accounts and links, said filter can be easily integrated with Outlook. But special elements like Safe Money are what sells this software for me. Safe Money basically protects your financial information by opening specific sites where such information is included in Kaspersky's special protected browser, avoiding exposure to unsafe online elements. There are also scanners for exposed traces of computer use and unsafe browser and system settings, virtual keyboard, bootable Rescue Disk creation tool and several more handy features that add to the overall experience.
Kaspersky Internet Security is a program that is ever-growing and ever-improving. That's why it's my personal favorite, and that's why this review is so glowing. Of course, the program has a couple of minor flaws, but those are largely just small annoyances, like the constant reminders or sometimes over-protective scanning identifying perfectly normal files as threats. But those are so minor that taking them seriously would be petty. Overall, Kaspersky Internet Security is as good as it gets.
v19.0 [May 14, 2018]
- The PC Cleaner component has been improved: You can now search for and remove browser extensions. You can now complain about an application that misbehaves.
- The Application Manager component has been improved: A schedule of application and browser extension search has been added. It is now possible to exclude applications from analysis based on object category. The list of ignored applications has been moved to a separate window.
- The Software Updater component has been improved: It is now possible to run a scheduled search for application updates. The list of ignored applications has been moved to a separate window.
- The operation of the Safe Money component has been improved: It is now possible to open a specific site in Protected Browser by clicking the application icon in the notification area and on the taskbar. Feedback forms that let you rate the component performance and report to Technical Support have been improved. A notification about whether your computer supports hardware virtualization has been added. The status of hardware virtualization is also displayed in the component settings window.
- The Parental Control component has been improved: When the time zone changes, the computer, Internet and application usage time is zeroed out. Similar applications, for example, browsers from different vendors, are now controlled as one application.
- The operation of the Anti-Banner component has been improved. New Anti-Banner filters have been added. They let you specify which banners in particular should be blocked.
- The display of notifications has been improved. Notifications that are not critical for application performance are not displayed while you are using office applications, running an application in full-screen mode, watching a video or performing a video call.
- The Tools window has been improved: the application features are now grouped by categories for quick search.
- The Recommended settings window has been added: the checkboxes Delete malicious tools, adware, auto-dialers and suspicious packagers and Detect other software that can be used by criminals to damage your computer or personal data have been added.
- It is now possible to scan scripts using Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI). AMSI is a standard Microsoft interface that allows scanning scripts and other objects. The component can only detect a threat and notify about it, but it does not handle threats. The component is available in Microsoft Windows 10 or later.
- Scanning of encrypted connections has been improved. You can now choose actions for sites that returned scan errors and add such sites to exclusions.
- It is now possible to disable decryption of Extended Validation (EV) certificates.
Discontinued features:
- The System Changes Control feature has been removed from the Application Manager component.
- The Communication feature has been removed from the Parental Control component.
- The following features have been discontinued for the Anti-Spam component: Integration with Microsoft Office Outlook and Outlook Express. User-generated spam base. Scan of mail sent though Exchange MAPI. Adding a sender’s address to the list of exclusions for Anti-Spam. Actions on spam mail detection: move, copy, delete, skip.
- Anti-Spam continues to scan messages on traffic. For more information about the discontinued features of Anti-Spam, see this article.
Known limitations:
- If the Always scan encrypted connections check box is selected, the application will scan encrypted connections even if you have paused protection.
- If the application was installed together with Kaspersky Password Manager and its active plug-in, the Internet Explorer browser does not display the On-Screen Keyboard quick launch icon in the login and password fields. You can open the On-Screen Keyboard by pressing the key combination CTRL ALT SHIFT P.
- If the application was installed over one of the previous versions, part of the managed applications may disappear from the list in Parental Control settings.
- After you enable the Anti-Banner component, banners on pages that are already opened in your browser are not blocked until you refresh the pages.
- If the application was installed in Windows 7 and you upgraded the operating system to Windows 10 but now want to revert back to Windows 7, you are advised to uninstall the application and install it again after reverting back to Windows 7.
- On certain websites, the application may block the download of additional pages in pop-up windows or frames. To resolve this issue, clear the Inject script into web traffic to interact with web pages check box in the network settings of the application.
- If interactive protection is disabled, tasks for processing threats on your computer from the My Kaspersky portal might not be performed.
