Carbonite

The typical product line for a security suite company involves a standalone antivirus program plus a full suite that builds on that antivirus. Many add an even bigger suite, a mega-suite with more features, often including backup and tune-up. Check Point's pattern is a bit different. The ZoneAlarm product line includes a free firewall, free antivirus plus firewall, and feature-enhanced paid editions of both, as well as a standalone anti-ransomware product. The line culminates with ZoneAlarm Extreme Security, which fits best in the mega-suite category. It has some attractive features, but the suite has shrunk considerably since our last review.

Your $89.95 per year subscription (often heavily discounted) lets you install ZoneAlarm on up to five devices, Windows, iOS, or Android. Bitdefender costs roughly the same for five licenses, while Kaspersky goes for $10 more. McAfee's price matches Kaspersky's, but lets you install McAfee Internet Security protection on every Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS device in your household. Price-wise, ZoneAlarm is in the normal range.

Like the rest of the ZoneAlarm product line, this suite's main window dresses in pastel gray, green, and blue shades. Three big panels represent Antivirus & Firewall, Web & Privacy, and Mobility & Data. Each panel displays a list of related features, and clicking it lets you manage those features. It looks almost identical to the paid antivirus, except that all features are enabled.

ZoneAlarm is one of the few modern security products that requires a reboot to finish its installation. After rebooting and making sure antivirus signatures are up to date, you should open the Web & Privacy page and install the Web Secure and Anti-Keylogger components.

What's Not Here

When I last reviewed this suite, it came with a host of ancillary tools licensed from other companies. ZoneAlarm licensed parental control technology from Net Nanny and spam filtering from SonicWall, for example. The PC Tune-Up component ran on Large Software's technology. ZoneAlarm provided backup across the product line, the same 5GB of hosted storage available for free directly from licensor IDrive.

In my review, I zinged the product just a bit because so many of its important components came from outside. Check Point solved that one, in a way. The current ZoneAlarm Extreme simply omits almost all the licensed components. All that remains is the free year of credit monitoring from Identity Guard. I'd be happier with a suite containing integrated, in-house replacements for those components.

Then there's the Find My Laptop Feature, an in-house creation. It allowed you to locate, lock and partially wipe a lost laptop. But it's absent from the current version.

One more departure is the ZoneAlarm guarantee. Check Point used to offer a money-back guarantee that as long as you kept the product configured correctly, you would not get infected. Norton and McAfee still offer such a guarantee, provided that you sign up for automatic renewal and give their support agents a chance to fix the problem remotely. Comodo Internet Security Complete($17.99 per Year at Comodo Antivirus) goes beyond a mere money-back guarantee, offering up to $500 to repair a problem that defeats both the correctly configured product and the company's remote support agents. This is just one more thing that ZoneAlarm Extreme used to do better.

Shared Features

Everything that you get with Check Point ZoneAlarm PRO Antivirus + Firewallnaturally shows up in ZoneAlarm Extreme. I'll recap the high points here. If you want to know more, it's all in my review of the antivirus.

Lab Test Results Chart Antiphishing Results Chart Malware Blocking Results Chart

ZoneAlarm licenses antivirus technology from Editors' Choice Kaspersky, but the antivirus testing labs clearly state that their results apply only to the actual product tested. At present, none of the four labs I follow include ZoneAlarm in their latest testing. By contrast, Kaspersky and Avira show up in reports from all four, and both managed a 9.8 aggregate lab score, out of a possible 10. Bitdefender Total Security came close, with 9.7 points based on results from three labs.

In my hands-on malware protection test, ZoneAlarm detected 86 percent of the samples and scored 8.4 points, very close to Kaspersky's score. Others have scored much higher, but then, Kaspersky tends to do better in lab tests than in my own tests. Challenged with the same set of samples, Norton scored 9.7 points and Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Complete($29.99 1 Year 5 Devices - $50 Off Exclusive for PCMag at Webroot) earned a perfect 10.

My malicious URL blocking test starts with a collection of malware-hosting URLs recently detected by researchers at MRG-Effitas. ZoneAlarm defended against 86 percent of these, roughly half by blocking all access to the URL and half by eliminating the malware payload. That's decent, but Trend Micro Internet Security and Bitdefender scored 99 percent, and Sophos and McAfee scored 97 percent. Almost half of recent products outscored ZoneAlarm.

The free ZoneAlarm doesn't have any phishing protection, and even the Web Secure component in the paid products only works in Chrome. You can see it in action as soon as you click a username or password field—ZoneAlarm analyzes the page and gives it thumbs up or down. However, in testing it only achieved a 76 percent detection rate. McAfee and Kaspersky Total Security managed 100 percent in their latest antiphishing tests.

Web Secure also incudes a feature called Threat Extraction. This feature manages downloads of document types that can be gimmicked with scripts or other dangerous elements. By default, it strips out the script and lets you read the document.

The original ZoneAlarm was a standalone personal firewall, one of the first. Its fine-tuned control over how programs access the Internet works with minimal user interaction. Though it doesn't include an Intrusion Detection System to fend off exploit attacks, in testing it put the computer's ports in stealth mode and defended against port scans and other Web-based attacks. And ZoneAlarm practically invented the idea of hardening a firewall against direct attack. I couldn't find any way that a malware coder could subvert its protection. You get basic firewall protection for free. Upgrading to a paid ZoneAlarm product adds a boatload of detailed settings that most users won't comprehend.

As noted, a partnership with Identity Guard gets you a year of credit monitoring for free. I didn't proceed with the signup, because free or no, it demanded my credit card. The very different Identity Lock aims to prevent transmission of user-defined personal information. However, it doesn't support secure HTTPS pages, which are becoming ubiquitous. In testing, it visibly didn't work even on unsecured HTTP pages.

See How We Test Security Software

Powerful Anti-Ransomware

New since my last review, ZoneAlarm Extreme includes the powerful Check Point ZoneAlarm Anti-Ransomware(19.95 Billed Annually at ZoneAlarm), an Editors' Choice for ransomware protection. You can read my review of the standalone product for full details; I'll summarize what I learned here.

When I started to update my review of the standalone anti-ransomware utility, I found it was defective, crashing frequently and failing in its protection. The same was true of the ransomware protection in the suite. My Check Point contacts quickly found and fixed the problem, which involved the accidental release of a bad build.

On detecting a ransomware attack, ZoneAlarm displays a big warning while it analyzes and terminates the ransomware. If any files got changed, it lists those for you before repairing them. Repairing here means restoring any files that got encrypted and deleting any ancillary ransomware files such as ransom notes.

ZoneAlarm managed a clean sweep, correctly detecting and cleaning up after every one of my real-world ransomware samples, including one that attempts to encrypt the entire drive, not just your documents. One ransomware attack damaged Windows Explorer such that even after ZoneAlarm's cleanup I couldn't use the system, but forcing a reboot brought things back to normal.

ZoneAlarm is an Editors' Choice for ransomware protection, sharing that honor with the free CyberSight RansomStopper. I'm very pleased to see that the company added this component to ZoneAlarm Extreme, especially given the many other components dropped from the mix.

Threat Emulation

When a truly brand-new malware sample appears, it can skate past many antivirus utilities. Eventually antivirus researchers capture a sample, analyze it, and push out an update so the local antivirus can deal with the problem. ZoneAlarm's Threat Emulation aims to streamline and automate that process, cutting the researcher out of the picture.

This component monitors the Downloads folder, the Desktop, and any other folders you specify. When you download an unrecognized file to one of these locations, Threat Emulation jumps into action. It uploads the file to a secure server and analyzes it for malicious behavior. If the emulation reveals anything nasty, the local ZoneAlarm product wipes out the file.

Anti-Keylogger

The anti-keylogger component is disabled by default. When you turn it on, it very specifically prevents keyloggers from capturing what you type in the browser. It works. In testing, I found that a popular keylogger captured my typing in other programs, but just captured random keyboard runs like QUERTY in place of anything I typed in the browser.

However, it's rare to find a keylogger that doesn't reach out to capture more than just keystrokes. The utility I used captures URLs visited, meaning it could see my search terms. It grabs clipboard content, and snaps screenshots. I'm not sure how much protection you really get from Anti-Keylogger.

Mobile Protection

From your online ZoneAlarm account, you can generate an email with a link to install mobile protection on your Android or iOS devices. The link both installs the app and connects it to your ZoneAlarm account.

After a quick setup, the Android app runs a scan for malware. You can tap the main screen to scan at any time. Below the big scan button are three smaller buttons labeled My Device, My Apps, and My Network.

Tapping My Device reveals some very simple information about your Android. On my test device, it reported that ZoneAlarm is up-to-date and that the device is not rooted. That's it!

When I tapped My Apps, it reported the device to be safe in three specific ways. All installed apps came up clean in the scan. No ransomware was found. And the scan also didn't find any loose APK files such as might be used for sideloading apps outside the App Store framework.

The My Network page reported my Wi-Fi network to be correctly encrypted and free of vulnerabilities. It also reported the Safe Browsing feature enabled. This feature uses VPN technology to route all internet traffic through a system that filters out malicious and fraudulent pages. A quick sanity check showed that it works. Note that this is not an actual VPN. It doesn't encrypt your traffic or disguise your IP address; it just uses VPN technology locally to filter out problems.

Almost every Android security app I've encountered has offered both antivirus and anti-theft services, typically along with some implementation of app privacy analysis. ZoneAlarm is among the very few without anti-theft, which is a shame. Loss or theft of an Android device is much more common than malware attack, after all.

On an iOS device, ZoneAlarm doesn't do much, constrained by Apple's tight control. It visibly runs a scan, as on Android, but it's looking for security problems, not malware. Tapping My Device showed me that ZoneAlarm was fully updated, but iOS was not; I fixed the latter problem. Tapping My Network verified my local network's encryption and integrity. That's about it.

Unusual Performance Impact

With so many components on the chopping block, I initially figured that ZoneAlarm would exhibit a reduced impact on system performance. However, I got a clue early on that this might not be the case. Several times when I rebooted the system, I wanted to fire up the suite right away, but pointing to its notification area icon got me a notice that the product was "initializing," not ready for me. Rather than rely on subjective impressions, I dove into hands-on testing.

I test for impact on boot time using a script that calculates the time from the start of the boot process until the system is ready for use, which I define as 10 seconds in a row with CPU usage under five percent. I average multiple runs on a clean test system, then install the suite on that same system and average multiple runs again. The average boot time increased by 38 percent with ZoneAlarm installed, which is a bigger hit that what most suites cause.

Performance Results Chart

Another script moves and copies a large and eclectic collection of files between drives. That one took 58 percent longer with the suite installed, more than any other recent suite. And when I measured the time for another script that zips and unzips that same file collection, it, too, exhibited more of a slowdown than the rest, 24 percent.

These poor scores are even more significant when you realize that some products cause no measurable slowdown in my tests. These include Bitdefender, ESET Internet Security, G Data, and Webroot.

A Shrinking Empire

Past versions of ZoneAlarm Extreme Security included backup, system tuneup, spam filtering, and parental control components, all licensed from third parties. Those components are all gone, along with the in-house Find My Laptop feature and Check Point's money-back antivirus guarantee. The suite that remains doesn't offer a lot beyond the paid edition of ZoneAlarm's antivirus plus firewall product. You get Threat Emulation, Anti-Keylogger, and Anti-Ransomware, along with limited protection for mobile devices. Of those addenda, only Anti-Ransomware is truly significant.

If what you seek is a suite that has a powerful firewall and Kaspersky antivirus, just choose Kaspersky Total Security. You could also consider Bitdefender Total Security, an Editors' Choice security suite that packs tons more features than the diminished ZoneAlarm. Those attracted by ZoneAlarm's cross-platform features will find that Kaspersky Security Cloud and Symantec Norton 360 Deluxe offer much more than ZoneAlarm—these two have also earned the Editors' Choice honor.

Sub-Ratings:
Note: These sub-ratings contribute to a product's overall star rating, as do other factors, including ease of use in real-world testing, bonus features, and overall integration of features.
Firewall:
Antivirus:
Performance:
Privacy:
Parental Control: n/a

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