SecureIT

The vast majority of those who rely on SecureIT ($1.95/month for three licenses) for antivirus protection don't necessarily know they're using it. Most of the company's installations are handled by ISP partners; less than two percent of users purchase the product directly. In addition to protection against viruses and other malware, the product offers a firewall and phishing protection. However, the only thing it does really well is keep malware from infesting a clean system.

Managed Installation
Installation is straightforward, but if it seems too difficult you can have the company's tech support experts manage the process for you. For $29.95 extra, they'll clear out any conflicting software, install the product, and run a scan for active malware. I don't know how many people would choose to pay more than a year's subscription price just to get security software installed. And if manual malware cleanup is required to get the product installed, that's a separate fee.

The product installed correctly on most of my malware-infested systems. Problems on one test system went away after I uninstalled and reinstalled the product. SecureIT would not install on a test system that can only run in Safe Mode due to malware. Many vendors offer an online scanner, a no-install cleanup tool, or a bootable cleanup disk; not SecureIT. My contact at the company confirmed that the product won't install in this situation, noting that SecureIT "is not designed to be a simple clean-up utility, but rather a long-term preventative maintenance application."

On another test system the SecureIT installation finished, but the product didn't run correctly due to a problem with some Visual Basic support files. Worse, this same problem balked the uninstall routine, so uninstalling and reinstalling wasn't an option. SecureIT simply didn't do the job on those two test systems.

Very Poor Malware Cleanup
Even when it did install and run properly, SecureIT did a poor job of cleaning up malware-infested systems. It only detected 58 percent of the threats, and its malware removal score of 3.6 of ten possible points reflects the fact that it left behind tons of malware traces for those threats it did detect. Quite a few were still running after SecureIT's alleged removal. Also, in several cases it detected and removed a malware installation file without doing anything about the active threat.

SecureIT performed especially poorly against rootkit samples. It detected 60 percent of them, but left the rootkit technology actively running for more than half of those it detected. ZoneAlarm Antivirus + Firewall 2012 ($59.95 direct for three licenses, 3 stars) detected all of these same threats and scored 8.2. When tested with my previous set of samples, Norton AntiVirus 2012 ($39.99 direct, 4.5 stars) detected 100 percent and scored 8.9 points.

For an explanation of how I test malware removal and derive these scores, see How We Test Malware Removal.

The most surprising thing about these test results is that SecureIT uses the BitDefender engine, and Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2012 ($39.95 direct for three licenses, 4 stars) was much more effective in testing. My contacts at BitDefender took a look at the product and concluded that while all the necessary components are present, the routines for disinfection just don't get called.

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