User guide

Product Review: Mac Security ‐ July/August 2014 www.av-comparatives.org
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When we attempted to update VirusBarrier
(the antivirus component), we were met with
the following prompt from NetBarrier, which
asked whether to allow access to the Internet
for the update process:
We also saw prompts from NetBarrier for its
very own processes, that is to say, NetBarrier
asks whether NetBarrier should be allow to
access the Internet.
We noted similar Intego firewall prompts in
last year’s report. At the time, Intego
explained that they did not think the
program’s own processes should be given
preferential treatment. We retain the same
view that we expressed then, namely that
such prompts are counterproductive and
confusing for non-expert users. We note that
Safari, the web browser integrated into Mac
OS X, is immediately recognised by Intego as
a safe application, meaning it can access the
Internet without any prompt from the
firewall. We suggest that Intego should afford
its own programs the same privilege.
Main window
VirusBarrier’s main program window provides
buttons provides buttons or links for updating
the signatures, accessing quarantine, and
running full or quick scans. There are also
buttons for configuring real-time protection
and scheduled scanning. Both of these have a
very subtle status display, in the form of
coloured dots. Program preferences can be
found in the VirusBarrier menu. Clicking the
Help menu |VirusBarrier Help opens the online
knowledge base in a browser; additionally,
clicking the “i" symbol in the top right-hand
corner of the window re-displays the overlay
of annotations which was initially shown after
installation. We could not find a means of
displaying subscription information.
We found Virus Barrier’s main window to be
clear and well laid-out, but we would like to
see an easy means of finding out when the
current subscription expires.
Mac menu bar
There is an Intego System Tray icon which
displays individual sub-menus for each of the
three components, as shown in “Note on the
program interface” above. There are also six
menus, VirusBarrier (About, Preferences,
Update, Setup assistant…), File (scans), Edit,
View, Window and Help.
Finder context menu
A “Scan with VirusBarrier” entry is added to
Finder’s context menu, so individual files,
folders and drives can be scanned by right-
clicking.
Maintenance
Signatures can be updated by clicking on the
blue update status definition text in the top
right-hand corner of the program window, or
from the VirusBarrier menu, or the NetUpdate
sub-menu, accessible from the System Tray
icon. If real-time protection is turned off, the
only indication is that the green dot next to
the text “Real-Time Scanning” turns orange,
as shown below:
We do not feel that this provides adequate
warning that real-time protection is disabled,
and suggest a much clearer warning should be
employed.
Non-administrator access
When logged on with a standard user account,
a user cannot disable real-time protection
without entering administrator credentials.
This is as it should be, in our opinion.