ZoneAlarm with Antivirus

Performance of ZoneAlarm with Antivirus

Firewall results
We tested ZoneAlarm with Antivirus's firewall against Steve Gibson's ShieldsUp security checker, which reported that our test PC was very secure and wasn't exposing its NetBIOS networking protocol over the Internet. In addition, our computer didn't respond to ShieldsUp's port-connection attempts, an indication of strong firewall protection.

ShieldsUp common ports	ZoneAlarm with Antivirus	McAfee Personal Firewall Plus 6.0	Norton Personal Firewall 2004
Port 21-FTP	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 23-Telnet	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 25-SMTP	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 79-Finger	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 80-HTTP	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 110-POP3	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 113-IDENT	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 119-NNTP	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 135-RPC	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 139-NetBIOS	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 143-IMAP	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 389-LDAP	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 443-HTTPS	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 445-MSFTDS	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1002-ms-ils	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1024-DCOM	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1025-Host	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1026-Host	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1027-Host	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1028-Host	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1029-Host	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1029-Host	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 1720-H.323	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
Port 5000 UPnP	Stealth	Stealth	Stealth
LeakTest	Passed	Passed	Passed

To test ZoneAlarm with Antivirus's firewall using ShieldsUp, we began with IP Agent, a free utility provided by ShieldsUp that determines the test machine's current IP address, then contacts the ShieldsUp Web site to begin testing. Next, the Port Probe utility from ShieldsUp tested our system's defense against Internet port scanners. The test originates from the ShieldsUp server and attempts to establish standard TCP/IP (Internet) connections on a handful of commonly exploited Internet service ports on the test computer. More information on these tests and what the results mean can be found at ShieldsUp.

Antivirus performance results
In our CNET Labs tests, ZoneAlarm with Antivirus caused less of a drag on system performance than Norton AntiVirus 2004 but more than McAfee VirusScan 8.0. But ZoneAlarm with Antivirus scanned our 1GB drive much slower than Norton and McAfee. Here are our test results:

	Test system	ZoneAlarm with Antivirus	McAfee VirusScan	Norton AntiVirus
SysMark 2002 Internet-content-creation (ICC) score	233	221	234	223
Normalized score	100	95	100	96
Percentage of degradation	N/A	7	0	4
Average boot time (seconds)	40.8	55.6	48.38	52.72
Scan 1GB directory; average scan time (minutes)	N/A	2.44	4.75	3.59

ZoneAlarm with Antivirus uses the Vet antivirus engine from Computer Associates. To determine whether Vet effectively blocks viruses, we gauged its performance in tests conducted by independent antivirus laboratories. In Virus Bulletin tests with live viruses, previous versions of Vet earned the coveted VB 100 percent rating in six of its six most recent Windows tests--on a par with Norton AntiVirus, which also earned the title six out of its last six tests.

More information about how we test antivirus apps and firewalls can be found at CNET Labs.