Sean Sullivan from F-Secure has resonded to my review of F-Secure Internet Security 2009. It’s always nice to see a company stand by their product instead of keeping silent. Hat’s off to F-Secure! Anyway, F-Secure offers a bootable linux rescue cd that I can’t wait to try (look for me review on that one).
Email 1 -
Greetings Matt,
I work on the Response team within F-Secure’s Security Labs. I write/edit a number of things related to the team’s output, including our weblog
(www.f-secure.com/weblog/) and therefore also the weblog’s YouTube channel (/fslabs).
Links to your reviews were forwarded to our FSLabs channel.
I’ve watched them and they do highlight a problem we face… installation of a heavy infected machine.
I’ve forwarded the links to the guy in charge of our review guidelines.
Hopefully Patrik will have the time to respond. At the very least, he’ll use them to highlight the issue with the “product owners/managers”.
In the meantime…
Before moving to Finland, (due to wife) I lived in the United States and worked as tech support. I’ve seen a great number of infected machines myself.
I too appreciate free tools as you noted in part 1 of your review.
So, I’d like to point out something that unfortunately doesn’t often receive enough attention. Our installation CD is a bootable Linux OS. The problem?
Most of our software isn’t sold on the retail shelf, so many don’t know about it.
However, our Linux Rescue CD is free for all to download. It automatically detects installed network cards, and can download our most up to date detection databases.
The Linux team’s blog has the details.
http://www.f-secure.com/linux-weblog/
ISO file:
http://www.f-secure.com/linux-weblog/files/f-secure-rescue-cd-release-3.00.zip
… and a YouTube demo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnhBQpsmNfM
I’m not sure how well you’ll be able to test on VMWare, but you might find it of use in the field.
***
There is also a beta application called Easy Clean that is being worked on. I don’t think that there are enough detections there to handle your test machine, but there should be a good start against XP Antivirus 2008.
http://support.f-secure.com/beta/fsec/fsec.shtml
I’m interested to see your feedback go to the development team.
Best Regards,
Sean
My Response
Hi Sean and thanks for the email. Yeah, I had no idea you guys offer a linux rescue cd. I’m going to test and review the rescue cd asap (and yes they do work in vmware). Is it Ok to post your email on the blog? As far as installing on heavily infected computers:
-what about offering a pre-scan or a boot-time scan (sort of like avast).
Just some thoughts.
Matt Rizos
Remove-Malware.com
Email 2
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Hello Matt,
Please don’t post my individual e-mail address, but you may use “weblog@f-secure.com“. I’m on that list and much of the Response team will then also be included; the more active bloggers read it.
Regarding the pre-scan and boot-time… I know that there are lots of suggestions being made and that Research is actively on the issue. I’m not a manager, so this isn’t the “official line”, but we as a company have a number of factors to consider.
Your video noted that Charter (I think it was) offers our product.
A big part of our sales model is that we are re-branded and are sold through ISPs. They share in the revenues. Since we don’t have a big retail “shelf”
brand presence, we don’t cannibalize any existing revenues. And we have over 170 ISP partners. They also cover their own support costs.
So the “product ownership” for the Internet Security software involves a LOT of input from a great number of partners. We have a lot to consider in the backlog.
I not entirely sure, but it appears that the backlog was driven to improve the installer this time around. And there was in fact a lot of good work done.
On a clean machine, the IS2009 product can install in 90 seconds XP and something like 60 seconds on Vista… In any case, there was great improvement made between the 2008 and 2009 products. One of the guys in the lab noticed that it was much easier to install on his father’s machine.
Then we have the heavily infected machine use case…
And I definitely know that such machines are out there, cause I’ve seen them myself.
I’m quite sure that the use case is moving up the backlog.
***
I hope you find the Linux CD useful. There’s also our Online Scanner.
I guess the trick there will be getting the IE browser to the scanner without it being diverted. But that’s why we’re working on Easy Clean.
***
Have to run for now.
Cheers,
Sean
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s cool. I know Sean Sullivan very well. He’s a really good person, but it’s great to see f-secure is looking at the public’s opinion of their product.
Best luck in the future,
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I actually sent them the video on October 4th, but I didn’t think they would actually read it I thought those AV Company guys logged in like once a year, but anyways next time if you do a review of an AV company’s product you should send them a review I believe Avira and Norton also have pages on youtube.