Comodo Internet Security - Features - Components

Components

Comodo Internet Security was designed around the concept of layered security and provides the following functions:

Antivirus

Comodo's Antivirus Software was publicly released along with the Comodo Internet Security Suite on October 23, 2008. It can scan programs as they are opened, providing continuous protection against threats it recognises, and can scan all or part of a file system on demand. Since CIS 3.8 it has offered a heuristics engine built into the scanner. CIS 5.0 added cloud antivirus protection and spyware scanning capabilities. As it could not clean all the malware it found effectively, Comodo Cleaning Essentials was developed to supplement CIS.

Firewall

Comodo Firewall Pro generally wins high scores on Firewall testing sites, such as Matousec, and has regularly been included in the top three firewalls. The firewall component has been declared Editor's Choice by PC Magazine and Gizmo's Tech Support Alert.

Host Based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS)

Comodo's host-based intrusion prevention system (HIPS), named Defense+, is designed to provide protection against unknown malware. It is designed to restrict the actions of unknown applications, and restrict access to important files, folders, settings and the Windows Registry. Defense+ employs Default Deny Protection, by default refusing any unknown file permission to install or execute except when specifically allowed by the user or when the file appears on Comodo's whitelist. In CIS 4.0 a sandbox was added to Defense+ to isolate and run unknown applications.

Remote assistance

Comodo GeekBuddy, which is also available by itself as a separate service, is provided with paid versions of Comodo Internet Security. It allows a Comodo technician to connect remotely to users' computers to help disinfect their system or provide other support.

KillSwitch

KillSwitch is an optional system monitoring component that allows users to identify, monitor and stop potentially unsafe programs.

Comodo Cleaning Essentials (CCE)

Comodo Cleaning Essentials (CCE) is an optional on-demand virus scanner and cleaner that uses the same antivirus engine and database as CIS. It requires a separate download and installation, although it can be done so from within CIS. It was created in response to criticism of Antivirus's ability to remove threats it detected. Unlike Antivirus, Cleaning Essentials does not provide continuous protection, but rather is run on demand from a hard drive or a USB device. So long as the machine is connected to the Internet, CCE can download the latest definition updates.

Before carrying out a full scan, CCE reboots the machine and starts itself before other processes, which allows it to detect and clean malicious processes which could otherwise hide from and resist cleaning by software such as Comodo Antivirus.

CCE can carry out a full scan or a custom scan for malware including rootkits, and run KillSwitch, a task manager, like Windows Task Manager but with added facilities to determine if a process is safe, unknown, or dangerous. It can terminate stubborn processes that cannot be closed by Windows Task Manager. CCE also has a module to analyze processes which run automatically at machine startup, identifying malicious autostart processes.