Zonealarm security suite, what a resource hog, agree?

I have used ZA firewall in the past with good luck but figured I'd try the ZA Security Suite as PC World and I think somewhere else I read gave it a good report, especially now the Kasparov is the anti-virus engine.

Man, what a resource hog. In looking at task manager, without doing nothing, it has three apps (scanning process twice plus vsmon) sucking up over a 100 meg of memory. Then whenever it does anything whether it be a scan or even just an update, the CPU usage jumps way up there, over 50 percent (granted an older P4 system).

Just wondered if others agreed/disagreed or if this much resource usage the norm for security suites this year. The CPU usage bothers me the most because if I'm watching a movie or listening to music, it will hiccup when ZA becomes active.

 

It is changing. Check out the latest beta versions and you will see that they made a lot of improvements !

 

I tried a security suite recently and it used 140megs at rest, but I'll tell you, it did everything but get coffee! The more they do-the more they use...and if you have a gig or two of ram, no biggie.

 

Yes, old versions were like this... you should try the latest.. The memory use its been cut off by half.
(7.0.408.000).

Or even better the current beta that have only one scannigprocess with 500-600Kb of memory use when idle instead of 25MB (note: one scanningprocess only on single core processor...).

Not sure I understand this problems about memory. Unless you run an old system recent PCs all have at least 2 or more Gig. of RAM and you should not have problems even if you have 100MB of use... still 90% or more free RAM for the system and your resident software.

Cheers,
Fax

 

Agreed. It's not how much you have but how you use it. I have a ram-hog of an app. but it works quite well with no slowdown. But those little apps. sometimes bog-down with little use. It's not always the size of the ram-but it helps!

 

I ran ZoneAlarm Security Suite on my XP machines. Might consider it again if they ever get the Vista version up to par with the XP version as far as features implemented.

 

Agreed I can live with the memory issues, it's the CPU hogging that bothers me. I am ordering stuff to make an AMD X2+4800 PC. I hope that will improve things like this over my current P4 2.26 northwood.

 

There must be some limit to what these security apps use (IMHO), as to what is aceptable?. I do agree that I would prefer the use of memory than a slow down, but come on,... 100 megs, lol.

I use standalone~ firewall/ HIPS/ AV,.. these take 30 meg at most.

 

I do remember trying out ZA+AV in the early 7.x versions and was shocked to see it using 100+mb ram also, with several scanning processes doing who knows what. I didn't notice the high cpu usage, but the ram usage was obvious. Don't know if it's changed in the newest releases either.

I agree with Stem though, the ram usage on some of these Suites is incredible. One that's actually super good in that regard is the Avira Suite. I used it here for about a week, and it hung in there at only 30mb total most of the time. As suites go, that's quite good.. perhaps the best I've ever seen...

 

Hi!
both CPU hogs and Memory footprint have been resolved/improved in recent releases... the beta I am currently using has:

- One scanningprocess.exe 600Kb (when idle). 15-26MB when scanning
- Vsmon: 35MB
- Zclient: 7MB

So lets say around 40-50MB overall....
Previous release where 50MB only for the two scanningprocess.exe
Improvements have been possible since latest KAV SDK has revised the way it scans files...

IMO the main issue with most recent security tools is not RAM usage but the load and hooking on Kernel that are, for the most part, not visible to users...

Cheers,
Fax

 

That is really good for a suite. Since I haven't used ZA, I can't vouch for it, but it does claim to do everything but make coffee. Take a firewall such as comodo, throw in an av like Mcafee or norton, a hips such as ssm pro or PS, and a real-time antispyware, and what will the memory usage be?

 

Has anyone added up the usage for their separate firewall, antivirus and antispyware and compared that total to the security suite usage?

 

Yes. The answer is: a suite generally uses less ram than a self-made combo. But, IMO, what I do not like in ZISS is that it is NOT possible to set anything in AV section.

Best regards.
Mike

 

If and when ZA finishes the Vista product so it includes the functionality of the XP product, I will look at it again.

 

And it only blocks viruses when it enters RAM memory unlike kaspersky and nod

 

I just built my AMD athlon 64 x2 4800+ and the CPU difference between that and my older P4 2.26 for ZA and other apps is tremendous. As mentioned when being activated for anything, whether doing a scan or even an update, for the older P4 system, ZA would spike the CPU above 50 percent. Now with new system, no matter what it is doing the CPU usage is in the single digits, often low single digits. Likewise other programs like winrar which used to peg the CPU at 98 percent are now well under 50 percent. Even when running multiple apps, it's hard to get the CPU usage above 50 percent. So now the ZA CPU computer load is a non-issue so I will continue to use it. I guess there certainly is something to these multiple core processors.

 

I personally don't mind using some ram if it's a good app that I like and it's doing a good job. The killer for me is cpu usage. If anything sends that up too much then I remove it.

 

Are you sure about this? I saw the real-time monitor of ZASS report malware even on inactive malware..........

 

see for yourself firecat, it gives you the options repair, quarintine, delete and some others and the file is located in temporary internet files, why temporary and not ram? because it was just about to go into ram from temp when zonealarm detected it and blocked it, thus giving it time to edit the registry and also the virus page still loads. nod and kaspersky blocks the page loading before it enters temporary files or any other.

 

customer services said and admitted too and i tested it myself using 10 rootkits, kak worm, redolf, mellisa, backdoor microsoft nutshell 97 no doubt.

 

None of those missing functions will change the core functionality of the suite. The real work needs to be in the area of reliability and compatibility.

 

Yeah, I think I verified it just today with a Trojan Downloader sample detected real-time. Like you said it was detected in Temporary Internet Files.....But if it edits the registry, then does the Kaspersky engine in ZA not manage to clean the registry entries?

What I mean to ask is, doesn't this behaviour from ZoneAlarm mean that it only has a "normal" real-time scanner and not an HTTP scanner like Kaspersky and NOD32?

 

Yes firecat, zonealarm has just a normal real-time scanner and not http ones and also, lavasoft, spybot, norton, panda all found traces of un-deleted registry of drivecleaner2006. but now i come to think abou it, kaspersky also found traces of registry and yet they still use the same scanner. They only lend the definitians, not the protective features contained in kaspersky. I think it means that zonealarm is still using 6.0s engine.Just a guess.

 

Actually YES, ZoneAlarm is just using the KAV 6.0 engine. But knowing that eScan (another KAV clone) performs at least some very limited registry cleaning, I wondered if ZA would do that as well with its custom Anti-spyware engine, if not by the KAV engine.

 

Sorry if this was not the question u were asking but to my understanding of the question, zonealarm DOES NOT use KAVs anti-spyware and only uses anti-virus definitions. I reckon Zonealarm does not really do a full clean on the viruses files and registry and spyware too because as i said earlier on, all the other vendors found traces of the viruses i tested ZA with.