Fort Appin

Every day, several threats like viruses, worms, malware hit the internet. Anti-viruses and security software can defend against these threats so long as they have the signatures for them. But what if it is a zero-day virus threat? something for which the cure hasn't been created yet. That's the USP being claimed by Fort Appin. The anti-virus also claims to be the first zero-day virus protection software developed in India. The anti-virus software is meant for small and mid-sized enterprises, but strangely, it also contains parental and privacy controls. According to Fort Appin's parent company, they introduced these features after surveying small business owners. They discovered that SMEs would like such anti-virus software to cater to their home needs as well.

The anti-virus comes integrated with Bitdefender's virus signature update for getting the latest virus definitions. We tested it on a Windows 7 (32-bit) machine with 1 GB RAM and 20 GB hard disk. The installation is quite easy and simple. After installation, you can choose from three dashboard views--Basic, intermediate and Expert. In Basic view, you get a few basic options like security, which consists of different scan options, and updates; while in Expert view, you get a comprehensive view with all settings like anti-spam, parental control, privacy control, etc. We loaded the system with viruses and it successfully detected 97% of them.

As compared to Vipre Antivirus premium (reviewed in March, 2011) Fort Appin encrypts chat, which Vipre could not, but the encryption is limited to Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger not to other IMs like gtalk. The parental control feature lets you save the Internet activity log of different users and you can also send an activity report to your email address.

Privacy control feature lets you control the registry, cookies, identities, etc so that your confidential and personal information like credit card numbers, passwords won't get leaked. Under the vulnerability setting, you can check and install the Windows update. Apart from that, it also updates the applications installed on your system.

Bottomline: A good anti-virus overall that can serve your home as well as business need. Consider it only if you have a few machines, as there's no centralized network based management in this.