Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2011

Although, some free antivirus programs are good at  detecting  and  cleaning viruses and  Trojans, you  need  a  good internet security  suite  that  has  additional features.  Trend  Micro  Titanium  Maximum Security  2011  is  a  comprehensive  suite  that features  parental  controls,  system  tuning utility,  data  theft  prevention,  spam  blocker,  and protection  against  suspicious  links  in  IM  and email,  in  addition  to  an  antivirus  program.

Features
All features are accessible from the notification area.  The main console displays the protection status and a brief security summary.  The scan button lets you perform a full, custom or a quick scan.  The tools button brings up a grid of icons for  accessing  the  important  components of the  suite,  such  as  Parental  Controls,  Data Theft Prevention, System Tuner, Secure Erase and Trend  Micro  Vault.  The access to more critical functions like Parental Control, Data Theft Prevention and Trend Micro Vault is password-protected.  The Parental Controls allow you  to  create  a  separate  Windows  user account  for  children  and  block  inappropriate content.  The types of  content  you  can block  are  categorized  into  four  categories  - adult  or  sexual,  communications  or  media, controversial,  and  shopping  and  entertainment.  You  can  either  choose  the  type  of  content you  wish  to  block,  or  let  the  program  do  it automatically  based  on  the  age  bracket  you select  from  the  drop-down  list.  The  days  and the  time  of  the  day  at  which  you  want  the  filter active  can  also  be  specified.

The main functions of this security suite lie in the Tools section. The UI is neat but when you select a function you can configure it in great detail.

Data Theft Prevention prevents hackers and spy ware from stealing sensitive data like credit card numbers, passwords and email addresses. It can also be used to prevent children from sending out critical data via email or IM. Simply create a list of phone numbers, email addresses, and credit card numbers that you wish to protect. To be safe, even putting a part of the word or number in the list is fine. System Tuner is a small utility that helps improve the PC’s performance by freeing up disk space and optimizing the registry. It also protects privacy by deleting browser  history  and  cookies,  list  of recently  opened  files,  and  IM  chat  logs.  Trend Micro Vault comes in very handy for protecting critical files from unauthorized access. On activating it, an icon appears on the desktop on which you can drag-and-drop files that you wish to secure.  The data can then only be accessed by keying in the correct password.

Secure  Erase  is  a  data  shredding  tool  that  deletes unwanted  files  by  overwriting  them  so  that  they cannot  be  recovered.  Simply  right-click  on  a  file and  select  ‘Delete  with  Secure  Erase’.

Parental Controls are useful if you have children using your PC. Either select the age group or manually select the type of content you wish to block.

Performance
We installed this suite on a typical home PC powered by a Intel Core 2 Duo CPU,  2 GB  RAM  and a  250 GB  hard  drive. It took 10 minutes to completely install and activate the product. The software utilizes 135 MB of memory in idle state and around 300 MB during scanning, which is slightly on the higher side. We found the scanning speed a bit sluggish; it took 19 minutes to scan 22 GB of data on the boot partition. The scan speed would be quicker on faster hard drives and SSDs. Unlike its competitors, Titanium  Maximum Security  2011  doesn’t  maintain  a  database  of trusted  files  (white list), so  instead of taking less time, it takes the same amount of time, each time you  perform a  full scan. If you wish to save time, you can use the quick scan function, which is significantly quicker because it only scans for file types that are most prone to infections.

The system tuner actually does a good job. It cleared a few hundred megabytes on our test PC.

Final Words
Brands like Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, F-secure, AVG, and BitDefender are rated among the highest by independent antivirus test labs like AV-Comparatives on the basis of virus detection, virus removal and system performance. Hence, our recommendation would be one of these. Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security 2011, does its job well and offers an extensive feature set for a good price, but we suggest you try it before buying.