Win32 Virus Removal

With a name like BullGuard you just know it's a tough, mean program, right? BullGuard Internet Security Suite 10 ($59.95 direct for three licenses) certainly looks tough, with its stark red and white color scheme and big, blocky buttons. In testing, though, this security suite didn't prove as tough and tenacious as its image and name would suggest.

The full suite looks a lot like the company's standalone BullGuard Antivirus 10 ($29.95 direct, 2.5 stars). In addition to on-demand virus scanning and real-time virus blocking, the antivirus tool includes spam filtering and a Safe Browsing toolbar, components that might typically be found in a suite. I'll summarize the shared features first; please refer to the antivirus review for full details.

Weak Core Competency
I ran into difficulties installing BullGuard on two malware-infested test computers. The built-in support system came in handy, but in the end the support technicians relied on a third-party product to clean up the problem and allow BullGuard to install.

Not all of the independent antivirus labs include BullGuard in their testing. Those that do have given it mixed results. In particular, it didn't pass AV-Test.org's certification for malware protection under Windows 7. However, in a test that was just released version 10 scored very well in almost all areas.

My own testing revealed that even when BullGuard does recognize and remove malware it will often delete just the primary executable files and leave almost all other file and Registry traces behind. In a few cases it didn't even get all the executables. It scored 6.3 of 10 possible points for malware removal overall.

BullGuard did detect 100 percent of the rootkit samples but only scored 5.8 points for rootkit removal. That low score reflects the fact that it left behind executables for most and left three rootkits actively running. It also scored poorly at removing scareware. For full details on how I test malware removal and derive these scores, see How We Test Anti-malware.

When challenged to defend a clean system against new malware infestation BullGuard didn't look so tough. Between Safe Browsing and download scanning it blocked two-thirds of the threats I tried to download, but it detected just 77 percent of the already-downloaded samples. Its 7.7 point score for malware blocking pales beside the 9.2 and 9.1 point scores achieved by Ad-Aware Pro Internet Security 8.3 ($39.95 direct for three licenses, 4.0 stars) and Panda Cloud Anti-Virus 1.1 (Free, 4 stars). For full details on how I test malware blocking and derive these scores, see How We Test Anti-malware.

Tough-sounding BullGuard just isn't tough enough when it comes to cleaning up malware-infested systems or protecting an already-clean system.

Helpful Antispam
This suite's spam filter is more helpful than most, with a wizard that identifies available e-mail clients and walks you through the process of integrating spam protection into the clients of your choice. It whitelists your contacts, so they don't get blocked accidentally, and can also whitelist the sender of any spam-marked message you identify as valid.

In testing, the spam filter cut the speed of e-mail downloading in half. That's not a huge problem, given that e-mail arrives in the background. BullGuard misfiled 3.3 percent of the valid personal messages as spam, more than any recent product except eScan Internet Security Suite 11 ($65.95 direct for three licenses, 2 stars). eScan blocked over 25 percent of the valid mail, so BullGuard doesn't look too bad.

BullGuard also mis-marked 1.9 percent of valid bulk mail (newsletters and such) as spam. Quite a few products didn't misfile any valid mail, bulk or personal, among them Cloudmark DesktopOne (Free, 5 stars), Norton Internet Security 2011 ($69.99 direct for three licenses, 4.5 stars) and F-Secure Anti-Virus 2011 ($39.99 direct for three licenses, 3.0 stars).

BullGuard's spam filter let 10.3 percent of undeniable spam into the Inbox. That's not terrible, but CloudMark managed to hold that figure down to 2.4 percent.

For information on how I analyze antispam accuracy, read How We Test Antispam.

My tests measure a spam filter's ability to distinguish valid mail from spam based on content, without the help of a whitelist. If you whitelist your correspondents, you won't see as many false positives.