Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 Download:

     By Jay Andrew Allen | December 14, 2011

Dashboard: The 2012 Dashboard sports a streamlined design. Kaspersky Internet Security 2011's navigation sidebar has been removed in favor of a scrollable button bar along the Dashboard's base. This permits Kaspersky to grow its feature set and add new shortcuts without cluttering the UI. The larger buttons also permit using KIS easily on a touchscreen-enabled monitor.

KIS 2012 Dashboard:

Kaspersky Internet Security is already feature-rich compared to its competitors. Instead of adding a slate of flashy new features, Kaspersky has focused its 2012 release on enhancing every component of its anti-virus technology - anti-virus, phishing protection, Web protection, and anti-spam - to leverage cloud computing. Rather than relying solely on a local database of virus definitions and malicious Web sites, Kaspersky incorporates anti-virus knowledge drawn dynamically from its millions of users. KIS components such as anti-virus and phishing query this collected cloud knowledge to help decide whether a specific artifact (such as a file or a Web site) is safe or malicious.

Kaspersky has made a few additional tweaks to its protection technologies that are more obvious to Joe User. For example, in last year's version, the anti-spam filter required "training" before it could activate. Kaspersky has removed this requirement, replacing manual training with cloud-based technology. Instead of requiring each user to train the anti-spam filter individually, Kaspersky feeds it anti-spam algorithm an extensive network database of verified spam messages.

One quirk of KIS 2012 is that there is no visible Firewall function. The application does ship with a robust firewall that Kaspersky activates it by default, and otherwise keeps hidden. Users made of sterner stuff than Mom & Pop can click Settings -> Firewall to change their firewall protection levels and set custom rules. We like this approach to firewall security, as most users don't have the technical acumen to make decisions regarding network protection.

For users interested in performance, KIS 2012 offers the Applications Activity window, which displays a list of running processes, and the Network Activity window, which shows how many incoming and outgoing Internet connections are active. It can be surprising to learn which applications do a poor job of terminating TCP connections. (For instance, we found Google Chrome could launch as many as 20 new connections when opening a Web site, but only successfully terminate 3 to 5 when the relevant tab was closed.)

The Task Manager in Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 displays a list of the most recently run virus scanning tasks, and links each task to a results report. Task Manager is available by clicking the Manage Tasks button on the Scan window. The feature is rather ill-named, given that it doesn't manage anything: it's an historical record of completed or canceled scans.

Kaspersky still has one of the best (if not the best) Parental Controls features on the Internet Security market. The feature is easy to activate, and permits parents to control their child's usage times, Web site permissions, and IM contacts.

As in 2011, the best unsung feature of KIS 2012 is Anti-Banner, a Web browser ad blocker that works like a champ. It's not enabled by default, but can be activated under Settings -> Anti-Banner. We would buy KIS 2012 for this feature alone. (Further Reading: What's New in Kaspersky Internet Security 2012?)

Kaspersky Virus Scanner:


Scan Speed: On our reference system*, KIS 2012 swept through our 1GB test matrix in an impressive 31.2 seconds, or a scan speed of 32.8 MB/second. That's a nice improvement over last year's scan speed of 27.3 seconds.

Updates: KIS 2012 matches last year's virus definition update frequencies of 12 updates per day.

*Reference Computer:  Windows 7 Home Premium running on a Toshiba Pentium Dual-Core T4200 (64 bit), with 3GB of RAM and a 210GB hard drive.

Kaspersky's help documentation is still written in woefully baroque English. (To wit, this howler from the What's New doc: "Intellectual system of updates downloading has been implemented.") Would it kill the company to hire a native speaker to edit copy? Fortunately, Kaspersky offers plenty additional support options, including live support through telephone or Internet Chat, an active user forum, and a new series of How To videos.

»Quick Support Links:

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