Comodo is actually quite famous for their excellent free firewall software. Especially power users will enjoy it’s configurability and options, which all are nicely laid out on a well designed GUI. It is also pretty well pre-configured as it recognizes the most common Internet applications (most browsers, instant messengers…) and categorizes them as safe application, thus not alerting the user. In case of an unknown application attempting to connect an alert is show. Interesting addition in the latest version is ThreatCast database, where Comodo  collects user’s responses to firewall alerts and aims to classify more files based on that – as we see in the screenshot, the FileZilla FTP client however was still unknown to the system (which is somewhat surprising?).

Comodos’s suite also has so called proactive defence features, branded as DEFENCE+. This is basically application behaviour blocking and authorization – the fireall will alert users on various application behaviour events. For an example application installations or application attempting to modify or launch another will cause a DEFENCE+ alert. Personally I find this kind of protection somewhat intrusive, and I doubt that it is very good for inexperienced PC users either, since the user has to have some knowledge whether an application should be allowed to do it’s thing or not. Anyway, the feature is there if you want it – I dont.

Conclusive anti-virus tests are impossible to conduct without a sufficient virus database and fortunately my PC is clean, so this part of the software suite is more difficult to evaluate. The good news is that Comodo’s real-time scanner doesn’t seem to be resource hog. I would guess it would fall to the similar category of Avast!, but this is purely subjective evaluation. I also tried the latest AVG recently, and it seemed to drag down the system much more than these two. What I would like to see is more options for the real-time scanner – personally I like to limit scanning to file system write operations only for improved file read and execution performance. Why? Well, a first thing a virus will try to do is to replicate and infect files, which is a write operation. This is of course somewhat less secure, at least theoretically, but it will improve the performance, but as said such options are not available.

I Googled around for anti-virus software benchmarks, but it seems that not too many conclusive ones are performed on Comodo. This report published by VirusInfo suggests that Comodo’s detection rate is somewhat mediocre. It is well below the best performers, but delivers similar detection rates than Sophos, Trend Micro or McAfee. Personally I don’t see this is as a huge concern. The virus database seems to receive updates almost daily and these days information of major virus infection outbreaks is so rapidly distributed on the Internet that I have little doubt that Comodo wouldn’t update their database rapidly if such event occurs.

Overall I am very pleased with Comodo. It delivers an excellent firewall and a decent anti-virus in one integrated package and does it without destroying computer’s performance – and it’s free. If you want to play it extra safe you could just use their firewall-only solution and combining it with Avast!, which seems to deliver a bit higher detection rates, but then you would lose the benefits of an intergated solution. At least be sure to check out COMODO’s offer before going shopping on the security market.

Download Comodo Internet Security: CLICK HERE

• Easy to use, low system resources
• Automatic update functionality
• Real-time protection as files are opened and programs are run
• AVG’s Virus Vault for the safe handling of infected files

AVG Anti-Virus Free is only available for single computer use for home and non commercial use.

Author: AVG Technologies (former Grisoft)
License: Free for home and non-commercial use

Avast! 4 Home Edition is a full-featured antivirus package designed exclusively for home users and non-commercial use. Both of these conditions should be met! Our company offers the Home Edition free of charge, since, in our opinion, it is possible to avoid global virus spreading by efficient prevention; however, many users are not able to or do not want to pay for antivirus software. This page will show you the most important features of this program.

Author: ALWIL Software a.s.
License: Free for non-commercial home use