Steganos specialises in privacy products, so a traditional internet security suite looks like an afterthought in the product line-up. In truth, though, it's a mature package and, although the 2008 version was released too late for this test, we anticipate it will perform similarly.

In appearance, Steganos looks and feels much like Kaspersky Internet Security - on which it's partly built - and, not surprisingly, it provides a similar degree of protection: its excellent malware-detection

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score of 96% in our tests was just 2% behind and, like Kaspersky, it stepped in every time a website tried to foist malware upon us.

Its firewall proved robust as well: in the default mode, it didn't bother us with any notifications during our penetration tests, although you can turn event alerts on if you want them. The attacking computer was unable to find any vulnerabilities, and the only visible route into the computer was on port 21 (FTP). Our false-positives test went off without a single alarm being raised.

In resource usage, Steganos outshone Kaspersky, and most of the competition, with a remarkably light memory footprint - just 71MB above a pristine machine. This comes at the expense of peripheral functionality (there's no parental controls or special privacy features), but there's a lot to be said for keeping it lean and simple.

If you have lots of machines to protect then you may find a better deal elsewhere, but for single users who don't demand sophisticated add-ons Steganos Internet Security is effective and efficient.

By Darien Graham-Smith

Download Steganos Internet Security 2009
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