I have been using the Comodo Firewall for a few years now and installed CIS a few weeks ago. I am not an expert on this stuff, but I want to voice my opinion about the product and my results.
I am the default IT guy at my house. We have three computers-mine-PC with Vista, wife-laptop with XP, daughters-PC with XP. I have tried to make them “the same” with the same anti-virus/malware/clean-up programs with mixed results.
In the past I have tried Avast, AVG, Avira (my favorite), Kasperski, and One-Care for Anti-Vrus. For firewalls/suites AVG, Kasperski, On-Line Armor, and Comodo. Since installing and changing programs I have learned a lot-sometimes the hard way-formatted/re-loaded Vista 3X and 2X on my wifes laptop. Why? because saying “yes” was easier than to say “no” when the Comodo firewall/defense popped up.
Anyway, to my comments… I trust my Comodo firewall to protect me. I have it setup to be secure with little to no messages. It seems to be working just fine. In the past it asked so many questions that my wife kept clicking yes and introduced some bugs to her laptop. Just like anything-it will protect us if we stop and think about the question. I uninstalled Comodo a month ago to try On-Line Armor and Avira. I liked how the On-Line Armor program was soooo easy to configure. The screens were easy to navigate through, and everything was easy to find. I cannot say that about Comodo-it seems like I have to really look to find a setting. Can you make the interface similiar to On-Line Armor? Sometimes I feel like maybe there is another setting in Comodo I haven’t found yet.
Now to the anti-virus. Avira worked in the back ground with only that advertisement to remind it was there. It scanned and didn’t find anything Comodo missed-so I feel like the Comodo firewall did a great job protecting me. When Comodo emailed me the “firewall” test, I tried it with On-Line Armor and Avira-both worked great and it didn’t miss one nasty. I uninstalled them and installed CIS on all three computers. CIS found some bugs in my wifes and daughters computers after they used On-Line Armor and Avira. Nothing serious, but CIS did find some issues. Maybe they were there prior to Avira/On-Line Armor-I don’t know. . I left my zip file in place from the firewall tests (I downloaded all the tests) and let CIS run a full scan. I was surprised to find all of them quarantined when the scan was finished-GOOD JOB Comodo. This tells me the Anti-Virus is working and working good. This weekend I loaded Sandboxie on my computers and I love it. I tested it by going to some “not too secure” sites. Comodo raised the red flag to warn me, but I clicked yes to allow and the nasty stuff came into my Sandbox. The program did what it was supposed to and the trojans and malware were stuck in the sand. Can Comodo provide something similiar for CIS? It is the fourth layer of protection for the “Opps I said yes to allow” situation-(my wife and daughter).
For me it is a toss up between CIS and On-Line Armor/Avira. I like both combinations. Both seem to be working to protect me and are not conflicting with other programs. My deciding factor for keeping CIS is Melih. Melih, I have watched some of your videos on YouTube, read your threads here, and I am impressed. I see your passion for this product and I believe that you will have the best product in the near future. I am here to support Comodo and I hope you continue to work to make Comodo CIS the best suite on the market. I am looking forward to the 3.9 release and new products from Comodo.
Thanks for your support and for taking the time to compose your well thought out post.
I see you’ve found the “If I click ALLOW, both the problem and the solution goes away! Yay!!” issue. Not limited to Comodo, this is the achilles heel of any software that requires either pre-acquired knowledge or relies on vigilance on the part of the user. Most average users operate on the premise that they are using their computer to do “stuff” and don’t want to be bothered by the nuts and bolts of how things work.
Comodo are acutely aware of this and are working towards a more intelligent GUI design (to ease familiarity and operability) and greater intelligence within the application (to reduce user interaction). These may appear within V4, but there is no concrete timeline for this version.
As for sandboxes - watch this space…
Also, search the forums for “Time Machine”. Another space worth watching …
Thanks Panic. I have read too many posts here where people are picking apart a product that is provided to all of us for FREE. We all want CIS to be as user friendly and secure as possible. It takes time for the programs to be signed off on to be changed, programmed, tested, re-tested, and finally released. I am willing to wait for the changes as long as the product improves and doesn’t change for the sake of change.
First of all, let me thank you for your kind words and your time for giving us your honest feedback. Only through helpful users like you can we improve ourselves. So thank you!
You are indeed touching very important points from usability to next level of protection. With 3.9 beta we launched, we believe we achieved, one of the most quitest (if not the quitest) protection available out there. Of course, in a Comodo fashion, we don’t stop there and continue with our progress and we have a Comodo Time Machine, Behaviour Blocker and a Sandbox coming up in the near future. You will love Comodo Time Machine, I mean who wouldn’t want a time machine after all ok, its just for your PC but hey.
We believe having a Layered Security product like CIS which is “architected” to work together with different layers of defense and protection gives it more protection as well as usability. For example a malware detected by our AV would not be alerted using D+ and so on. Also we have additional protection with Buffer Overflow protection and Memory Scanner.
At the end of the day it is your security and your happiness we work for day in day out, literally! If we can’t provide you a top notch protection and gain your happiness and trust, then what would we have?
We will continue innovating and leading the industry and we will protect you as best as we can! Thats our promise to you!
Ewen, I didn’t mention this, but I am the Support Supervisor for a company specializing in agricultural dealership software-AP, AR, Parts, Service, Rental, and others. I work with our programming department on a daily basis and know what it takes to produce a quality product. Positive input from the users and a lot testing.
It takes a long time to take an idea and put it out for daily use. We test our products, send out beta software to the field, and finally release it. Even though we send it out tested and re-tested-someone alway’s finds something we missed. But, we report it and it gets fixed.
Melih, keep moving forward. If something is broken-fix it. If the users want something added/changed-listen to us. Most of all, keep being creative and putting out a great product.
Yeah, yeah, I’m all for a mutual appreciation society, but what good is ANY free product that ends up humping the user’s machines.
Melih… have you actually been paying attention to OTHER sites recently, your product is becoming a bit of a joke, sadly (and yes, despite my recent tone I do honestly mean that… and it’s not just my vocal opinions that are causing it… I’m not that vocal).
It’s all very well adding new components, but you MUST get your existing ones working reliably, before you get the kudos for new one… THAT’S OBVIOUS, but you just aren’t getting it… besides the fact that your product is straying far too far away from your hallowed core product… quite franky your coders simply cannot keep up with your lofty ideals.
When your product was simply a firewall it was A-number 1… there’s no getting around that fact, and I certainly wouldn’t even attempt to dispute it… but you are simply trying to do too much too soon and you are accomplishing NOTHING, except the self-destruction of your hard earned reputation… and yes these issues may be sorted out in the future (and I say “may” here, because so far regardless of the work that is being done… you are NOT making any head way into the bugs that already exist… and in increasing numbers I may add!), but if you are not careful and don’t at the least TRY to reign things in a little, then by the time you get your product back on track, your rep will be in tatters and you won’t have the user base that you once had… which is already shrinking. Look for yourself, have a look at the polls being currently passed around by the USERS, not the industry, and this becomes hopelessly apparent.
Give us back the superb firewall we once had… stop cramming it full of features that you simply cannot get to work reliably enough!
Some of us feel like we are being treated like guineapig for your half baked ideas.
If you have bug it should be dealt with in the bug reporting section. Pls report it there.
As to other issues you raised: The number of users are increasing month on month. So respectfully I will have to disagree with you cos I can SEE our stats and no of installations and its steadily going up. The uninstallation ratio is less than 5% and has been steady. So what I can conclude is majority of these users like our product and keep it. Thats close to a 1M new users a month.
No software can be 100% bug free and we are here to help fix any bugs. You seem to be reporting a random bug when I checked your posts and its very difficult to fix a bug we can’t reproduce without users help. Please be patient as without your happiness and trust we don’t have anything else from you cos we don’t charge you. So we will work hard to earn your happiness and trust.
Thank you for your understanding Wibble.
Melih
PS: Wibble although you couldn’t reproduce this bug some other user was able to reproduce it and got in touch with our development team. Now they are working together to resolve it. I hope you appreciate the complexity of software development where different hardware configurations and software configurations can cause difficult to reproduce issues.
I’m VERY glad to hear it, although I fear that by the time you have fixed the issue(s), not just mine, that one of the less mature features you are working on may also rendering your product an unwise choice.
Wibble, I think you need to relax. Haha, fine do what you like, but hear me out. I’ll keep it quick and simple.
Seriously, Comodo Internet Security (CIS) is an amazing achievement. I have tried just about every Firewall, Antivirus, HIPS, Sandbox program out there (paid or free). And yet I think the following:
Comodo has one of the best (if not the best) Firewall
Comodo has one of the best (if not the best) HIPS. (most definitely the best “classical” HIPS. Malware Defender is trying to catch up, but it’s far behind)
Comodo has one of the worst Antivirus…sorry Melih. Maybe not one of the worst haha, but average at best. It is improving big time though, and it is one of the lightest (if not the lightest) AV out there.
It is completely free! Utterly amazing!
Its classical HIPS is not that user friendly (I started out as a noob with Defense+, but I now know how to use it very well and use it comfortably everyday - it goes to show that experience and common sense is really needed when using a computer, as you can’t have 100% bullet-proof security, no matter what you’re using. Please take some time and see my thread at Wilders: No such thing as 100% | Wilders Security Forums).
If you only like the Firewall, just install only the Firewall! Easy as that.
CIS (Antivirus, Firewall, Defense+) is the lightest security product currently. Period. My opinion I guess, but I’m sure most people who have tried it will agree. I’d go as far as saying that it’s lighter than NOD32 2.7 running alone, and those who have used NOD32 2.7 will know that it’s nearly impossible to get lighter than that.
I’ll stop there, as I didn’t mean it to go on that long.
I’ll just add finally that if Comodo develops stable and reliable Rollback Management system, Sandbox, and Behavior Blocker, that will be a minor miracle. It would be absolutely amazing to witness.
I thought you guys built a Sandbox, evaluated it and found some vulnerabilities in it. This was a while ago when “CFP + ThreatCast + Sandbox” was scheduled for release.
Anyway… It’s really good to hear that you are now considering Sandboxing and also Behavior Blocker built into CIS. If you get all this in v4… You have unbeatable protection: Firewall, Antivirus, HIPS, BOClean, Buffer Overflow Protection, Time Machine, Behavior Blocker, Sandbox, CIMA like Heuristics.
I am also non-expert user of pc. I have used Comodo CIS 3.8 for a month and I am completely agree with Brian. Comodo antivirus is getting more and more good. Actually I am very surprised the progress of this software. I like to try softwares in my laptop and a year before I never imagine today.
As I said, I am a non-expert user (average, novice, what you may called it, up to you) and I was a bit tired of popups, although installation mode is helpful. Maybe there are two different auto configuration that one is for novice users with less popups.
But I never worried about them because you are working much, I see from your forum. I am waiting new improvements written here about version 4. And I am very sure I will try Comodo CIS again near future.
My idea, Comodo does the job in a few years (1 or 2) the others have been done 10 years.
Regard.
2 months ago I installed a PC for a friend who is, to be polite, inept with computers. A few days ago he e-mailed me (took him 7 weeks to find out how to send e-mail, although I’d shown him how to do it!) saying that he is delighted with the PC and especially Comodo.
I’d been worrying about him and CIS, but [even] he seems to be OK with it.
Apart from when I’ve made mistakes, CIS has been the best FW etc. that I’ve ever had.
Most of my family is not very computer savvy, so I’ve been holding off on recommending CIS to any of them.
A short time ago, my sister called with some computer issues. One of them being an extremely slow boot, and just a generally unresponsive machine. Her system is pretty old, (around 10 years) and it is maxed out with a whopping 384MB of RAM! 88)
Her current security solutions were eating up around 100MB of memory resident goodness. So I bit the bullet and uninstalled everything she had (Spybot, Windows Live One Care, AVG, ZoneAlarm) and installed CIS for her. Not surprisingly, the boot is now much quicker and her system is more responsive because CIS saved her around 95MB, so applications aren’t hounding her swap file as much.
Anyway, the point of all this is that she is loving her CIS experience. She was already somewhat familiar with an application that would ask if various tasks should be allowed or blocked because it was similar to ZoneAlarm asking about applications accessing the internet, so she wasn’t overwhelmed by the whole thing as I had feared she would be. So I’ve been pleasantly surprised that such a novice was able to cope with the switchover to CIS. (Firewall and D+ set to Safe Mode)
It never really went away. I believe the re-achitecting of CIS necessitated that it be placed on the back burner, while other blocks of the CIS architecture were put in place.
Not limited to Comodo, this is the achilles heel of any software that requires either pre-acquired knowledge or relies on vigilance on the part of the user. Most average users operate on the premise that they are using their computer to do “stuff” and don’t want to be bothered by the nuts and bolts of how things work.