Reviews

Trend Micro Internet Security review: Uncompromising virus protection

Performance is a touch on the sluggish side, but you can’t do better than this for malware protection

by: Darien Graham-Smith

4 Jun 2020

Price

£17 exc VAT (1yr, 3 devices)

Faultless protection
Simple UI
Smart social media trust scores

Slightly underwhelming performance

If you’re looking for uncompromising virus protection, you can’t do better than Trend Micro Internet Security. Along with Norton 360, it’s one of only two security suites we’ve tested to achieve a faultless 100% protection score.

We like its compact, no-nonsense front-end, which divides functions neatly across four pages. On the Device page, you’ll find scan settings, and an optimisation wizard that checks for security vulnerabilities, wasted disk space and personal history files that could compromise your privacy. You can also set up the versatile Mute Mode, which not only silences interruptions when you’re running in full-screen mode, but can also temporarily disable Windows Update and automatically kill nominated processes to ensure they don’t interfere with your experience.

The Privacy page lets you check your settings on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to ensure you’re not oversharing – a great idea, which we’d love to see extended to a wider range of sites. And while many security suites inject trust ratings into Google search results, Trend Micro is the only one we’ve seen that does the same for links shared on social media sites.

Trend Micro also installs the Pay Guard tool, which is not a self-contained safe browser, but rather a sandboxed instance of your regular browser. This means you don’t lose access to your saved passwords or history so it doesn’t feel like a chore to use. It’s just a shame that you have to open it manually: it won’t spring up automatically when you visit a shopping or banking site.

Over on the Data page you’ll find the anti-ransomware Folder Shield feature, which can protect USB-connected media as well as local directories. And under Family you can set up usage limits, category-based website blocking and even time-limited app restrictions for individual users – although these features are tied to Windows accounts, and don’t extend to other platforms.

In all, Trend Micro has a lot going for it, but a few things hold it back from an award. One is a high false-positive count, which means it might not be ideal for novices. With an overall performance rating of 90.1%, it’s weightier than we’d like too – and at £20 a year it’s towards the pricier end of the scale. Still, those issues needn’t be deal-breakers.