Trend Micro Titanium Anti-Virus Beta 3 Testing

Good Evening ! Go to Trend Micro's Site click on Contact Us...Go to Bottom Of the page and click on Beta Tests. I was sent an E-Mail by Trend Micro asking if I wished to be a Beta Volunteer. I'm admittedly Beta Shy having had mixed experiences regarding past testing. But for the more adventurous at Wilders...to quote Nike...just do it! I think Trend might be working on a suite as well...all Cloud based. Happy Testing...Securon

 

Hey are you talking about this page?
https://www.trendbeta.com/pages/main
Titanium beta is quite stable IMO.

 

Any cloud based AV, should not loose focus on offline performance. A balance needs to be achieved between the detection capabilities of the offline and online modes. MSE is on that road by making use of its Dynamic Signature query. The Offline mode should have excellent detection while the Online mode can have awesome, so to speak.

 

Good Morning ! sg09...yes that's the correct page...and I believe from the description from Trend Micro that the product is already in it's final release candidate stages...in other words in will be a relatively quick beta testing period. If someone can volunteer input from the testing...it would be appreciated. Sincerely...Securon

 

I'm testing the Beta and its good. The memory Trend uses is high, 115 mb but I hope they will fix that

 

I downloaded and installed Trend Micro Titanium Maximum Security (Beta 3) last night. I ran this on Windows 7 x64. Before installing TMT I uninstalled Kaspersky 2011 Internet Security CF1 Beta and rebooted. I also have Prevx (Registered) running, although I disabled realtime protection during install of TMT.

During the install process TMT runs a scan of your computer. It doesn't say what it is looking for, but I suspect it is looking for other security programs. This first time I ran the installer the installer locked up at this stage and I had to logoff and login to kill it. The second time I ran the installer, this search worked.

TMT found, and forced me to uninstall Malware Bytes Anti Malware, before it would install Trend Micro Titanium. I thought this was pretty weak because this is the unregistered version of MBAM and I had no resident scanner running. I guess the mere presence of MBAM will break Trend Micro Titanium.

The TMT installer launched the MBAM uninstaller, then I had to restart the TMT installer. The installer ran, and after awhile TMT was installed and running. I had to put in my beta serial before I could do anything else.

The TMT User Interface is very spartan, and settings are minimal. TMT seems to be going for the "Set it and Forget It" mind set. Being a power user I found the configuration options to be basic and overly simplistic. I like to tinker with configuration options -- but with TMT there are not very many to work with.

http://x626.com/images/tmt_1.png

After install, I loaded Firefox. Trend Micro installs 2 Firefox extensions. The first is very similar to WOT in that it marks all your Google search results with Red or Green highlights, indicating if the link is safe. The second extension adds a button to the Firefox toolbar which accesses (very basic) settings for the browser security function. You can turn the link checker on or off, and adjust the sensitivity. There is no real explanation of what the sensitivity setting does. A browser extension is also installed into IE8. Nothing is installed into Chrome. In fact, a website that was blocked when using firefox will open just fine in Chrome.

I went to Malware Domain List and tried to download some nasties. Every single one was blocked by the browser screening. The only way I was able to download anything was to force an override. When I forced the override, and downloaded the file, 9 out of 10 times Trend Micro detected the trojan and deleted it before I could even try to run it. So in terms of protection, it's pretty impressive. The one exception was a trojan called SpyEye. I was able to download this and even with manual scans Trend Micro did not detect it as a Trojan. (Neither did Prevx, but Hitman Pro found it).

Now here's the funny part. Each time I downloaded a file Trend Micro found it in two places, my temporary folder, and in some other browser cache. For some reason, occasionally it was only able to delete one of the 2 files. When it only can delete one, it freaks out and warns you that your system is compromised. You'll see in the above screenshot that even today, a full 24 hours later -- the warning is still showing. There is no way to clear the warning manually. The tray icon also displays a ! and it refuses to return to normal.

The second funny thing is the "Security Summary" which displays the number of Securit threats stopped in the past 30 days. This number is very high. Why? Because it counts every tracking cookie and various blocked web element as a threat.

http://x626.com/images/tmt_2.png

I guess this is supposed to make me feel good about the protection TMT is granting me. In reality I find it misleading and slightly deceptive.

Funny thing number 3. When you start the user interface the first time there is a popup which says "No more clicking Update!" and a picture of a cloud. It explains that since TMT uses cloud based security, updates are not necessary. However, hidden away in the Tray Icon options is a "Update Program" link. Apparently definition updates are not necessary, but program updates are. TMT seems to automatically download, update, and refresh it self. There is no configuration option for this check so I don't know how often it happens. It ran an update on it's own, silently, right after I installed Beta 3, upgrading some core components. Only by hovering over the tray icon will you know an update is running.

http://x626.com/images/tmt_3.png


TMT Maximum Security contains some other features like a System Tuner and Parental Control system. But I haven't bothered to play with those yet.

System impact seems small. It runs 5 separate processes which total about 54 megs of RAM usage when idle. I haven't noticed any real slowdowns in my brief period of usage.

Pros:

• Browser security is amazing, blocking everything I tried in the MDL.
• File based security seems very good, finding 9/10 test trojan downloads as malicious after overriding the browser based security.
• Few options to confuse newbies.

Cons:

• Forced uninstall of MBAM prior to install
• "Stuck" error message regarding removal failure can't be cleared.
• Silly "threat" counter
• No Chrome support
• Lacks options for fine tuning preferred by power users

 

Thx for sharing your experience

Looking forward for this one. Seems that Trend Micro will get better detection rates with their cloud technology. I always liked TMIS interface and this one seems very nice too (and yes I know nice gui's dosent help detection rates...).

 

Thanks for your review fabrini. As this is a beta version we can expect better in the stable version. I too tried to install it and it offered to remove Immunet and Spyware Blaster.
Anyway the thing I don't understand is that why they are now installing browser addons. They offered a good real time protection feature like that in Web Protection Addon that works for any browsers and also for Bot attacks.
IMO if everything goes right, TMTitanium will be the one which can give Panda Cloud a good competition. Their web protection is truly awesome.
About the sensitivity settings, at the highest settings it blocks even those websites that haven't been checked by TrendMicro...
Btw, does it have any Firewall?

 

I agree on the interface - I think it's the reason I've retried Trend Micro's software from time to time.

 

I think Trend Micro has improved over the years and the latest Internet Security
is a very good tool especially in terms of prevention . The interface is a very nice one too

 

Trojan SpyEye, is tricky malware...It has the capability to hide himself and it also hook several API's to protect himself from removal. Anyways, no doubt that TrendMicro have really impressive prevention capability, but i still doubt on its removal capability...
BTW i also request you to test this Beta version with fairly new viruses, i mean 0day's not with 1day or 2day..

 

Good Morning ! It will be interesting to see how Trend handles this from a Marketing perspective. Will it augment the existing lineup...or will it in time eliminate the existing products...and be completely...Cloud based. And as a footnote the Price points will eventually be the prime factor to drive the customers decision making process. Knowing Trend it might be initially on the high side...it's a delicate balancing act...especially given the state of the economy...and the glut of quality...no charge product. And kudos to everyone for their feedback...and the depth of critique on the Titanium product. Sincerely...Securon

 

I like how they made a new approach in customizing the interface. I presented it to my girlfriend (no tech savy) and presented KIS 2011 too and she found TMIS interface very easy to use and navigate in - and she didnt miss all the options. So great when looking at "set and forget" and maby too simple for advanced user (eventhough I like it quite a lot)

Wird, it didnt check the websits similar to WOT and didnt install a button anywhere. It blocks websites like U mention but no red or green highlights

Agree with you here. On pros. I find it VERY light too and I like the fact that it dosent install a second firewall, but uses and strenghtens the great windows firewall (still have to investigate what kind of changes it makes). On cons I also miss Opera support but this is a major "problem" for all the companys. Also I would like scan options like Norton, who automaticly scans computer when idle - a feature I really like.

 

Trend Micro Titanium have now been released

http://emea.trendmicro.com/emea/home/home-user/index.html?id=home

The experience is just as great as in the beta for me
Looking MUCH forward for some detection testing now cloud has been incorporated

 

Interesting indeed.

I just watched a YouTube test (better than nothing) of the Beta though.
And the URL blocking feature seems to be great since it blocked all of the 35 URL's the user tested against

 

So are they moving away from the full suites? I noticed that none of them have their own firewall but, they contain a feature to "enhance" windows firewall.

 

Vista and Win7s firewall is improved, plus most people connect through a router now, making a software firewall less necessary. I never install a firewall anymore if I can help it.

 

I was just wondering since it is not a full suite but, carries the same price tag.

 

Me neither except for Norton's and Kaspersky's firewalls who dosen't bother me at all. Just wonder what improvements they add to the Windows Firewall

 

Looks like they stopped with the "ordinary" products, and are going full on this Titanium now. (Actually expecting to see the same happening to Panda, abandoning the normal products and make a full Cloud line up.)

 

Naming a product “Titanium Maximum Security” doesn’t leave a lot of room for releasing 'new & improved' anti-malware products in the future, does it?

 

Thanks for the update..

 

No mention of this release on the U.S. site.

 

On the USA website, the Titanium product is for netbooks.

http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products/personal/

 

I know, but no mention of the other Titanium products.