Launched in October, version 5.5 of Webroot’s SpySweeper and Anti-Virus (SSAV) tool now has a neat configurable firewall with the package.

We reviewed the consumer version of SSAV 5.5, but the enterprise version differs only in providing a management console for IT administrators to manage rollouts onto multiple systems and the absence of the firewall. We tested SSAV 5.5 on a variety of systems, two desktops and a laptop running Windows XP and a laptop running Vista Ultimate.

Vista’s intrinsic anti-malware system, Windows Defender, has been the subject of several critical reports on its ability to keep systems clean of malware.

In all cases, set-up was completed in less than 15 minutes, the major part of the install time spent downloading the 10MB definitions file, and when set up the executable has a footprint of around 53MB.

The SpySweeper interface offers good usability. It is simple to navigate the features and set options to ensure that system performance does not suffer too much on older systems.

The minimum system requirements are a 350MHz processor and 256MB of system memory. One of our systems had a 500MHz Intel Pentium III processor with 384MB of PC100 system memory, which did increase scan times.

After updating the signature definitions, there were 222,864 spyware definitions and 345,805 virus definitions. The scan itself when started checks system memory, the registry and then scans for cookies, before going on to scan the drive the user has specified.

After a scan is complete, users can check online for more details about specific threats. For instance, the initial scan of our Sony Vaio desktop system turned up a list of cookies, giving name, description, characteristics, method of infection and consequences.

Each threat is assigned a risk level on a scale of one to five, most cookies rating one on the scale. Threats can be quarantined and then deleted, or unknown malware can be reported to Webroot for further forensic analysis and characterisation.

To take a look at the desktop firewall, we shut off the Windows XP firewall, which does not check outbound connections anyway, and installed Webroot’s firewall. As before, the GUI was easy to use, but we could not configure individual port settings.

In conclusion, this is a good, easy-to-use package, which also complies with independent anti-malware testing firm Virus Bulletin’s VB100 certification standard on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 systems.