Quick Heal Internet Security

When you upgrade from antivirus to a full security suite, you expect such enhancements as a firewall, ransomware protection, and more. With Quick Heal Internet Security, ransomware and firewall protection are already present at the antivirus level. Upgrading gets you email and spam protection, parental control, safe banking, and other niceties. The additions are useful, but the core protection they are built on is just decent. For an entry-level suite with a full contingent of quality features, we recommend Editors’ Choice winner Bitdefender Internet Security.

How Much Does Quick Heal Internet Security Cost?

The price of a single-device license for an entry-level security suite ranges from about $40 to about $60 per year, with K7 Total Security being an outlier at $27. G Data Internet Security runs $39.95, ESET Home Security Essential goes for $49.99, and Bitdefender Internet Security for $59.99. Quick Heal’s $45 per year price is comfortably in the low end of that range.

However, a modern home with just one computer to protect is uncommon. Most security companies offer volume discounts for three-, five-, or even 10-device households. For example, a three-license subscription for ESET or Webroot Internet Security Plus costs $59.99, and Bitdefender Internet Security gives you three licenses for $84.99. As for Quick Heal, there’s no volume discount, so the price to protect three devices jumps to $135 per year.

At five licenses, the gap gets worse. Prices range from $61 per year for K7 Total Security to $89.99 for Bitdefender. With Quick Heal, simple multiplication brings the five-license price to $225. There’s no question that this product becomes expensive for anything beyond one-device protection.

Getting Started With Quick Heal Internet Security

As with Quick Heal AntiVirus Pro, anybody can download a free trial of this suite. Once you purchase it, you simply add your registration code to activate it.

The suite’s main window looks virtually identical to that of the antivirus, the main differences being the window title and a blue background for the left-rail menu, whereas the antivirus uses a red menu background. In the center, two round dials indicate your Security Score and Privacy Score on a scale from 0 to 1000, just as in the antivirus. A banner across the top displays overall security status, panels at the right link to instructional articles, and a stripe along the bottom offers stats on what the suite has done for you lately.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

I don’t know about you, but when I see a score meter, I want to get the best score I can. As with the antivirus, a Recommended Measures link below each dial offers score-raising tips. Once your new installation installs any updates, your Security Score reaches 950. You can move that up to 1000 simply by scheduling a scan.

Cranking up your Privacy Score isn’t nearly so easy. Three of the five options still require an upgrade to Quick Heal’s top-tier suite: Enable Anti-Tracker, Enable Data Breach Alert, and Enable Webcam Protection. As with the antivirus, you can gain 100 points by password-protecting your settings. Unlike the antivirus, Enable Safe Wi-Fi is unlocked; however, my test virtual machines don’t have Wi-Fi connectivity. Maxing out this score isn’t possible without an upgrade.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Below the default Status choice, the left-side menu offers Protection, Privacy, Performance, and More, each leading to a page of features, as in the antivirus. On the Protection page, this suite adds Email Protection and Safe Banking, along with shared antivirus features. The Privacy page adds Smart Parenting and Wi-Fi Scanner. The suite adds nothing to the Performance and More pages.

Shared With Antivirus

This suite includes everything from Quick Heal AntiVirus Pro, with enhancements in some areas. I'll summarize my evaluation of the antivirus here. If you want more details, please read the full antivirus review.

When possible, I reference test results from four major international antivirus labs. In years long past, Quick Heal garnered some good scores. However, none of the labs have included it for the last several years.

For those security tools that show up in at least two recent lab reports, my aggregate scoring algorithm maps and combines the various scoring methods onto a 10-point scale. Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and McAfee Total Protection hold a perfect 10 points based on results from three labs. Among antiviruses tested by all four labs, Avast One and Norton 360 Deluxe share the best aggregate score, 9.6 points.

In addition to the expected scan features, Quick Heal offers a boot time scan and a bootable Emergency Disk. A full scan finished more slowly than the current average, more than two hours, but optimization during the initial scan cut 98% of that time in a repeat scan.

When I ran Quick Heal through my own hands-on malware blocking test, it scored very poorly. It only detected 73% of the malware samples. Sophos Home Premium and Malwarebytes Premium each detected 98% of the same samples.

Perfect blocking of the detected malware would have earned Quick Heal 7.3 of 10 possible points. However, its far-from-perfect showing allowed malware to install many executable files on the test system, dragging that score down to 5.8 points, the lowest among products tested with this sample set. Malwarebytes holds the best score, 9.8 points.

In addition to testing each security tool against a set of known samples, I use a feed of the latest malware-hosting URLs supplied by MRG-Effitas to evaluate real-time defense against the latest malware. Quick Heal blocks access to sites it identifies as dangerous before they ever reach the browser—it caught 76% of the test URLs at this point. Real-time antivirus wiped out another 8%, for a total of 84% protection. That’s good, but Bitdefender, Guardio, Sophos, Trend Micro Internet Security, and ZoneAlarm all achieved 100% protection in this test.

The same component that diverts the browser away from dangerous URLs also handles phishing URLs, those fraudulent sites that masquerade as sensitive sites to steal login credentials. Using very recently reported frauds, I test each antivirus alongside the phishing protection built into Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.

Processing hundreds of reported frauds revealed that Quick Heal detected just 61%. All three browsers scored better using their built-in protection. For comparison, Guardio, McAfee, Trend Micro, and ZoneAlarm all detected 100% of the samples in their most recent tests, as did the fraud-focused Norton Genie.

Other Shared Features

Like many security systems, Quick Heal adds a layer of protection specifically aimed at preventing damage by ransomware. I tested this system by turning off the real-time Virus Protection and Malware Protection modules, leaving just Ransomware Protection. Challenged with a dozen real-life ransomware attacks, Quick Heal detected and shut down all of them. In a couple of cases, the ransomware encrypted 30-40 unimportant ancillary files, but that’s not uncommon with behavior-based ransomware protection. No important documents were harmed.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Where most vendors reserve firewall protection for their security suite, Quick Heal includes it in the basic antivirus, along with an Intrusion Prevention System. Its program control system simply blocks unsolicited incoming connections by default. You can crank it down to no protection or up to blocking all connections except trusted programs, but most users won’t touch the firewall settings.

I didn't see any reaction from the Intrusion Prevention System when I hit the test machine with exploits, though the antivirus component smacked down the malicious payload for almost half of them. On the positive side, I couldn't find any way that a malware coder could terminate the firewall's protection.

Quick Heal offers a few other useful features at the antivirus level. A browser sandbox aims to foil drive-by downloads and other browser-centered threats, calling out its protection by adorning the browser with a green border. A stripped-down backup system supplements ransomware protection by backing up your most essential files to a local drive, a network drive, or a cloud drive that manifests as a local drive.

The Do Not Disturb function kicks in automatically when you’re running a full-screen app such as a game or video display. In this mode, Quick Heal suppresses notifications and postpones scans and updates. And a feature called Track Cleaner wipes away tracks and traces of your computer and internet use, to foil snoops.

Email Protection and Spam Filter

Quick Heal’s email protection defends your system against email-based attacks in several different ways. By default, it blocks sneaky attachments with double extensions like .JPG.EXE. In any case, you’d just see the first extension. You can also set it to block all attachments or block user-specified attachment types. Do note that the user-specified list is preconfigured with dozens of file types, including some you might want to receive, like JPG, PDF, and ZIP.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

By default, only trusted email applications can use your SMTP connection to send email. This prevents misuse of that connection by malware. Initially, only a few Quick Heal processes are trusted, but as you use your legitimate email clients, you get prompts from Quick Heal asking whether to add them to the trusted list. If you see that prompt for an unfamiliar program, just smack it down.

The antispam components in some suites bristle with configuration settings. ZoneAlarm Extreme Security NextGen lets you tweak sensitivity for various categories of spam. With Trend Micro, you can block messages written in languages that you don't speak and have spam automatically removed from your webmail accounts.

Quick Heal keeps things simple. Its spam filter just handles POP3 email, not IMAP, Exchange, or Web-based email. The spam filter is officially compatible with Microsoft Outlook, Incredimail, Eudora, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, and Windows Live Mail. (Yes, several of these email clients no longer exist). My Quick Heal contact mentioned that, practically, it works with many other email clients.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

A simple plugin for supported email clients helps you whitelist known good contacts and blacklist spammers. You can also manage the whitelist and blacklist from within the program. Finally, you can accept the Moderate filtering level, or you can choose Soft or Strict filtering. The company recommends the Moderate level. And that's the extent of spam filtering in Quick Heal. Most users totally ignore detailed antispam configuration, so this simplicity is a good thing.

What Parental Control Features Does Quick Heal Internet Security Have?

PCMag doesn’t currently rate or recommend parental control software, suggesting instead that parents make use of screen time tracking and other child-focused features built into modern operating systems. However, if you’re using Quick Heal you might as well check out its parental control feature, Smart Parenting.

Smart Parenting covers the basics but not much more. You can configure settings for all users or configure them separately for each Windows user account. The most effective third-party parental control systems let you define a profile for each child and apply the same settings to all the child’s devices. Quick Heal settings are for a single device or account.

Quick Heal's content filter allows or blocks content in 46 categories. A somewhat awkward list lets you see just five categories at a time. You can choose from one of four age ranges to automatically select appropriate categories or, of course, make your own custom selection of categories. In addition, you can list specific websites that should always be blocked or always allowed.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Parents can set a weekly schedule of times when the child is allowed online in one-hour increments. Unlike most similar grid systems, you can’t simply drag with the mouse to allow a big block of time, say, 9 am to noon on all seven days. You must click on every grid block individually.

A similar grid lets you schedule overall PC access for each child. You can optionally set a daily device time limit in one-hour increments rather than a specific schedule. But you can't set both a schedule and a time limit.

Quick Heal can optionally block access to programs matching 10 predefined categories, among them Email Clients, File Sharing Applications, and Media Players. You can also pick out specific individual programs for blocking.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

I set up restrictions for an imaginary child and put this system to the test. The time-control feature lets the child know when time is running out, with a warning to save all work and quit. Tweaking the system date and time didn't fool the scheduler. I couldn't get around program control by copying or renaming a banned file; all I got was "Access Denied." And the three-word network command that neuters some less clever parental control systems had no effect.

I verified that the content filter is browser-independent by trying to visit naughty sites using my hand-written browser. The page that replaces a blocked site reports the category that triggered the block. There's no automated system to ask parents for an exception, as you get with Norton and others. It just advises children to contact their parents for permission.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

I didn't find any inappropriate websites that got past the filter. However, Quick Heal is hyperactive when it comes to content filtering. In addition to checking each page the browser visits, it checks third-party content, ads, and such and pops up a notice saying, "Access to the website is blocked," even when it is merely blocking some third-party content on the page. Visiting PCMag.com triggered a deluge of warnings on categories including Travel, Downloads and Sharing, Advertisements and Pop-ups, and Social Networking. The continual pop-ups were so intrusive that I couldn’t use PCMag.com at all.

I also tried surfing innocuous sites with some unexpected yet familiar results. Puppies.com was blocked for the category Crime and Violence and Dogs.com for Fashion and Beauty. It seems the content filter may be a little overenthusiastic. Why familiar? Seven years ago, when I last reviewed this suite, I saw the very same results.

When I last evaluated Quick Heal, it supplied an activity report for parents that wasn’t terribly useful. For every blocked URL, it reported the date, time, and user account involved but not the URL itself. If you wanted to see the URL, you had to dig in for details on each line.

That problem is gone because the parental report is gone. Quick Heal now offers parental activity reporting through its MetaProtect online dashboard, a feature available to users in India.

Quick Heal's time controls do work, and kids can't fool its application control. I found its content filter to be overzealous, blocking valid sites. As noted, we at PCMag suggest that you look to your operating system for screen time and content control.

Safe Banking and Secure Browser

Like Bitdefender's SafePay feature, Safe Banking is a separate, hardened desktop intended to prevent any interference or spying on your financial transactions. As with SafePay, you can switch back and forth to the regular desktop. Bitdefender’s SafePay kicks in automatically when Bitdefender detects that you're visiting a financial site; you must launch Quick Heal’s Safe Banking manually. In addition, your very first use of this feature requires a reboot.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

There are other differences. With Bitdefender, the hardened desktop comes with a hardened browser based on Chrome. Quick Heal's Safe Banking includes taskbar icons to launch Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Internet Explorer using each browser's high-privacy mode. It relies on Google's secure DNS servers (or a secure DNS system of your choice) to foil DNS-spoofing attacks. It also blocks access to secure sites whose SSL certificates aren't valid.

Safe Banking is designed to foil keyloggers, but for the truly paranoid, it also includes an impressively flexible virtual keyboard. Simply by clicking virtual keys rather than tapping physical ones, you defeat keyloggers that try to hoover up keystrokes—even physical keyloggers. If you toggle on the Hovering button, you no longer even click keys; hovering 2-3 seconds over a virtual key “types” it. And for maximum stealth, toggle Shuffling on. Now, the keycaps randomize between each character. As virtual keyboards go, it’s a virtuoso.

(Credit: Quick Heal/PCMag)

Small Performance Hit

If your security suite puts a noticeable drag on system performance, you might be tempted to turn it off, which would be a security failure. Fortunately, most modern suites only have a minor effect on system performance. Even so, there's a good bit of variation, so I run several hands-on tests to measure each suite's performance hit.

My boot time test script assumes that the system is ready for use once 10 consecutive seconds pass with no more than 5% of CPU usage. Subtracting the start of the boot process, as reported by Windows, yields the boot time. I average many tests with a suite-free system to get a baseline. Then, I install the suite and run another round of tests. Boot time rose by 13% with Quick Heal installed, but the actual time difference was just a few seconds, not much.

On-access scanning necessarily requires that the antivirus keep an eye on file operations, and this can occasionally slow down everyday actions like moving and copying files. For testing, I average many runs of a script that moves and copies a ton of files between drives, comparing the average before and after installing the suite. This script took just 8% longer with Quick Heal active. That's about average for current products. A script that zips and unzips that same collection repeatedly ran just 2% longer, less than half the average for that test.

In testing, I didn't notice any slowdown. Even so, other suites have exhibited substantially less impact. Webroot Internet Security Plus and Avira Internet Security had no measurable impact on any of the three tests.

Broad, Not Deep

Quick Heal Internet Security brings all the expected security suite features, including antivirus, firewall, spam filtering, parental control, and even a limited backup system, along with useful bonuses like safe banking and ransomware protection. But the antivirus is just decent, parental control is minimal, and its phishing protection is poor. For an entry-level security suite, choose Bitdefender Internet Security instead. This Editors’ Choice suite offers an even wider selection of features of better quality than Quick Heal, and it costs significantly less if you’re protecting more than one computer.