You can make your PC secure in a number of ways, some of which are more effective than others. Gluing green fuzzy felt all over it and mounting a beak in one of the drive bays to disguise it as a ventriloquist's duck, so burglars might not notice it... that's one of the more deranged ideas you could have. Installing G Data's Internet Security suite is definitely one of the saner.

The program's front end is crisply rendered and neatly groups together the various arms of the suite, with one drop-down menu per section to quickly access the main tasks such as running a virus scan.

A pair of load meters is displayed in the corner, showing the stress the suite is putting on your system and the overall system load itself. Keeping an eye on these throughout the review we noticed the odd spike in the load when G Data was busying itself with tasks, but nothing to cause undue worry.

As ever, anti-virus performance is paramount when it comes to security, and G Data certainly didn't disappoint in this department. It actually runs two virus scanning engines which are both turned on by default, although this results in a longer scanning time than would normally be expected. In fact it was just over 50 percent longer than the average time two other security suites achieved on our test drive.

However, G Data's performance was excellent, picking up two trojans that a previous scan with another program missed. Definitions are updated every five or ten minutes or so, and we were highly impressed with its anti-virus capabilities. There's also the option to turn off one of the engines for a faster scanning speed (although not quite as thorough protection, obviously).

Definition updates happen automatically and scans can also be set to automatic. G Data will intelligently pause a scan if you're running other programs and the system load shoots up, a useful touch. The suite's firewall is also, well, 'firewall and forget', since it operates using an autopilot which makes all the decisions about accepting connections. No pop-ups or user intervention are required, so ease of use is certainly maximised.

GData Internet Security 2010 also provides anti-phishing protection, an email scanner and a spam filter, along with a file shredder to ensure that your data is deleted securely. Finally, a parental control section rounds the package off, and it blocked all the dodgy test sites we attempted to browse. It comes with a timer to restrict your children's Internet usage as well. This is an excellent all-round security package, and more than reasonably priced too.

Company: G Data

Contact: 08448 870000

Tags: antivirus kasperskylab internet security personal computer phishing security kaspersky mcafee