McAfee Internet Security 2011 Download:

McAfee Internet Security aims to give users their money's worth by providing a slate of useful features. Besides the usual anti-spam and real-time virus scanning features, McAfee offers SiteAdvisor, a browser-based scanner that blocks access to malicious Web sites. Unlike similar offerings from other vendors, McAfee's SiteAdvisor works in every major Web browser, including Google Chrome (many only work with Internet Explorer and Firefox).

Files that are deleted off of a PC aren't necessarily deleted: these files are marked for deletion, but the actual portions of the hard drive containing the data may never be erased. Hackers often scan drives from old PCs in search of credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and other sensitive financial information. Shredder, which is available under Data Protection and Backup, is a permanent file deletion utility that erases every last trace of a file off of a user's system. Shredder is not only available from the Dashboard, but also from the Shred command in the Windows Explorer context menu. Only a very small number of anti-virus vendors include such a utility in their Internet Security suites - and McAfee's one of them.

My Network provides a birds-eye overview of the user's home network, including all PCs and connected devices. Users can even install McAfee on several PCs, and monitor and fix security problems from a single computer.

The Parental Controls feature in McAfee is a bit clumsy, but still not too difficult to activate and maintain. McAfee supports assigning a Windows account to an age range, and blocking Web content and Internet technologies that fall into one of 20 broad categories. Parents can also limit a child's Internet access to specific times of the day. McAfee forces parents to create a password before activating Parental Controls so that settings can't be altered by tech-savvy teens. On the down side, McAfee's implementation lacks a few features found in other platforms, such as the ability to block content or generate warnings based on custom keywords.

McAfee's Firewall implementation is both full featured and easy to understand. The Security Levels setting allows users to set the strictness of their firewall protection to one of five levels: Full Access (block no local programs), Outgoing Access, Monitored Access, Stealth (a user's computer is still connected to the network, but is not visible to other machines or devices), and Lockdown (no Internet access). The SmartAdvice component decides when to grant application's incoming or outgoing Internet access; it can also be configured to prompt users whether to allow or deny access to specific applications. The Security Level settings can be customized at the port and application levels.