Archive for the Product Review Category

Name Description Actions On
Outpost Firewall Pro 3.0
BOTTOM LINE:
Outpost Firewall Pro’s plug-in architecture made it easy for Agnitum to add spyware protection to the suite. However, its spyware-fighting ability just doesn’t measure up. We suggest you use a best-of-breed standalone instead, or wait for a better plug-in.   

PROS:
Detected five of six commercial keyloggers in testing. Firewall module aided in spyware detection.

CONS:
Only removed half the spyware it found. Only blocked half the spyware installations it detected. Very little information about found threats.

COMPANY: 
Agnitum Ltd.

 

SPEC DATA
  

Price: $39.95 Direct
Type: Personal
By  Neil J. Rubenking

Antispyware:
Agnitum’s Outpost Firewall Pro is a firewall by nature, but Version 3.0 takes advantage of the product’s plug-in architecture to add full-scale spyware removal and prevention. Other plug-ins handle ad blocking, e-mail attachment quarantine, content filtering (based on user-defined lists of unwanted URLs or keywords), and more. We tested its abilities against our standard antispyware regimen.

Outpost detected all but one commercial keylogger and removed three, but didn’t successfully block installation of any of them. Although it detected two-thirds of our sample spyware in both tests, it succeeded in blocking or removing less than half of those. In a few cases the firewall element prevented suspicious activity by the installer, effectively halting the installation. Many of the successful removal operations required a reboot.

Outpost was sig-nificantly better at detecting spyware than at either removing it or preventing its initial installation. Future versions may improve the program’s performance; until they do, you’d be better off with a best-of-breed standalone antispyware product.