Zone Labs Adds Anti-Virus To Firewall

Firewall vendor Zone Labs on Monday added anti-virus defenses to its security line to go head-to-head with consumer and small-business leaders Symantec and McAfee.

Anti-virus has been added to two new commercial packages, ZoneAlarm Security Suite and ZoneAlarm with Antivirus, said Fred Felman, Zone Labs' vice president of marketing.

This is Zone Labs' first effort in the anti-virus space, and comes from licensing Computer Associates' eTrust technology, which that company typically sells to small- and medium-sized businesses.

"We looked at various anti-virus technologies' industry ratings and their ability to stop viruses and clean machines," said Felman. "One thing that influenced us was Virus Bulletin's VB100 awards. And CA made us a great deal."

Virus Bulletin regularly evaluates anti-virus software against in-the-wild viruses and worms, and awards those technologies which stop all current malicious code.The addition of anti-virus features puts Zone Labs in direct competition with Symantec and McAfee, both of which offer suites that integrate personal firewalls, anti-virus defenses, and intrusion-detection features.

"We're smaller, lighter, faster, and stronger [than the competition]," boasted Felman, citing the small footprint of ZoneAlarm Security Suite -- a 10MB download -- as proof.

ZoneAlarm Security Suite, which retails for $69.95 -- the same price as Symantec's Internet Security 2004 and McAfee's Internet Security 6.0 -- also includes instant messaging (IM) provisions that block IM spam, called "spim," from reaching AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger users.

ZoneAlarm with Antivirus, meanwhile, combines anti-virus features with Zone Labs' basic ZoneAlarm personal firewall, and is priced at $19.95.

Also on Monday, Zone Labs launched new versions of its for-free ZoneAlarm firewall and the commercial cousin, Zone Alarm Pro. The latter, which includes automated configuration for popular Internet-enabled applications, costs $49.95.0