Description
McAfee Internet Security offers all expected suite features, antivirus, firewall, antispam, parental control, and more. But you get the best of these features in McAfee's standalone antivirus, for quite a bit less
WHY MCAfee
- Protection for every Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS device in your household.
- Excellent phishing protection.
- Improved independent lab scores.
- Password manager rich in multi-factor authentication options.
McAfee packs an amazing number of useful features into its standalone antivirus product. This year's edition adds ransomware protection and a PC speed booster. You might think there's not much left to add to distinguish its security suite. Indeed, while the added features in McAfee Internet Security are welcome additions, they don't add value for everyone. Password management is a universal need, but McAfee's offering isn't one of our top choices. Not every user requires parental control, or spam filtering. And these components haven't significantly grown or evolved since last year. Unless this combination of components perfectly fits your needs, you're better off sticking with the less expensive McAfee Antivirus Plus.
All the products in McAfee's security line-up include protection for every Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS device in your household. That's a lot of protection Bitdefender and Kaspersky give you five licenses for a good price, even if you don't use more than 10 licenses, it just feels good to know there's no limit.
Other Shared Features
McAfee Antivirus Plus contains a surprising number of features that go beyond merely protecting against malware. New in this edition, PC Boost speeds your day in two ways. It boosts applications by diverting extra resources to the foreground program, and to any processes that need more than they're getting. And it boosts browsing by actively pausing any videos that try to launch automatically.
The firewall component both protects against outside attack and keeps programs from misusing your network connection. By default, it handles program control internally, which is much better than entrusting that task to the untutored user. For testing, I enabled its Intrusion Protection module and attacked the test system using vulnerabilities generated by the CORE Impact (Opens in a new window) penetration tool. The attacks didn't penetrate the fully patched test system, but McAfee's firewall didn't actively defend against them. It mostly stood up to my direct attack test, though I managed to disable a few of its Windows services.