Kaspersky is one of the most protective cybersecurity companies worldwide. With eight regional units worldwide, the demand was increasing to compare the different cybersecurity suites the company offered to decide which one to get. If you browse online now, you might find several recommendations for either Kaspersky Antivirus or Internet Security, which we feel is a lacking comparison. Moreover, if you looked for the Internet Security suite on Kaspersky’s official website, you wouldn’t find it.
For these reasons, we wanted to use our Kaspersky Antivirus vs. Kaspersky Internet Security battle to clarify everything you need to know about the cybersecurity suites, their features, similarities and differences and which you should consider.
What is Kaspersky?
Kaspersky is a global cybersecurity solutions company founded more than 25 years ago. The cybersecurity solutions the company offers have been at the forefront of the cybersecurity protection field since then; they were dubbed “advanced for their time” a few years after their release. The excellence of Kaspersky cybersecurity services pushed it to rank among the top cybersecurity solutions companies in the world. Independent lab tests such as Av-Tests and Av-Comparatives revealed that Kaspersky’s antivirus protection scored 99% and 99.97%, respectively.
The company offers numerous cybersecurity products, including antivirus software, password management, internet security, endpoint security and more. Solutions available for individuals are Kaspersky Free Antivirus, Kaspersky Standard Antivirus, Kaspersky Plus and Kaspersky Premium. It also offers cybersecurity solutions for businesses such as Kaspersky Small Office Security. These solutions offer a tight network of security around your data, with malware protection, suspicious behaviour detection and notifications regarding malicious websites. There are also parental controls, password manager and website diagnostics.
What is Kaspersky Antivirus?
Kaspersky Antivirus is a powerful antivirus agent that protects your device against malware, ransomware, real-time detection and elimination of malicious factors, spyware, and adware. The software provides you with a powerful VPN to secure your time online, an excellent firewall to monitor your network, anti-phishing, performance optimisation and system clean-up. If that’s not enough, the software gives you a mute mode to quietly finish your work or perhaps an exciting game; it protects your online payments and protects you from stalkers and crypto ware threats.
One of the best features of Kaspersky Antivirus is its compatibility with all main operating systems, Windows and macOS for desktops and Android and iOS for smartphones. You can pick up to 10 devices to protect, with an increase in price, of course, but to protect one device for the first year, you will pay $19.99 only and renew at $29.99. If you choose to protect ten devices, for example, for a year, it’ll only cost $34.99, and renewal costs $50.99, which isn’t a huge price difference. This shows that Kaspersky Antivirus offers great value for money and that it deserves to be on the top list of the best antivirus agents worldwide.
The Kaspersky Plus plan starts at $29.99 for the first year to protect one device. The renewal price is $42.99 after the first year. This plan offers enhanced antivirus features, an unlimited and faster VPN, a password manager, a tool to check for data leaks, and another one to check for hard drive health and a password safety checking tool.
The last solution, Kaspersky Premium, adds more features such as a smart home monitor, protection for your identity and online wallet, an expert checker and remover of viruses, an expert checker for device health, a remote access detector, around-the-clock customer support, a smart home monitor and comes with a year-free Kaspersky Safe Kids. This cybersecurity solution starts at $31.99 for the first year and renews at $45.99.
What is Kaspersky Internet Security?
Kaspersky Internet Security was a cybersecurity solution issued by Kaspersky in 2006 that offered extensive online protection. The cybersecurity solution offered protection against spamware, email protection, anti-phishing and anti-malware. Unlike Kaspersky Antivirus, Kaspersky Internet Security was compatible only with the Windows operating system and macOS X operating system, which is highly lacking for a supposedly more advanced cybersecurity agent.
More recently, Kaspersky replaced its Internet Security suite with its newest and updated cybersecurity solutions: Kaspersky Standard, Plus and Premium. The company doesn’t offer support or updates for its Internet Security versions. After the upgrade to newer versions, the company worked on enhancing and sharpening the features of the new plans to ensure a stable and high level of protection.
Despite the replacement of Kaspersky Internet Security with other cybersecurity solutions, the old security suite offered unprecedented levels of online protection. It had several features that weren’t available in the Kaspersky Antivirus. Such features include parental control, powerful anti-spam and anti-banner features, safe application mode, phishing capabilities and a strong firewall.
Kaspersky Antivirus vs. Kaspersky Internet Security: Their Similarities and Differences
Even though you can’t purchase Kaspersky Internet Security anymore, we noticed many similarities and differences between this extinguished cybersecurity suite and Kaspersky Antivirus.
Similarities between Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Security
We can count the common features of Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Security on our hands. These similarities include:
- Both software agents provide powerful antivirus detection capabilities.
- When you install either of the cybersecurity agents, you will get protection for your emails. Where the agents continuously scanned and removed spam emails to avoid cybersecurity issues.
- Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Security offered vulnerability scans and provided cloud protection for your system.
- Kaspersky Antivirus offered a privacy cleaner for any sensitive data you wanted to keep out of the reach of other users or prying eyes on the web, a feature that Internet Security offered as well.
- To provide you with a safe and protected browsing experience, both the Antivirus and Internet Security suites allow you to customise your browser’s settings according to your preferences and if you want to add any website exceptions.
- Two vital features both the Antivirus suite and Internet Security suite offered were prevention against potential vulnerability exploitation and protection against malicious screen lockers.
- To fix any potential security problems arising in your Microsoft Windows system, both cybersecurity suites offer troubleshooting capabilities.
Differences between Kaspersky Antivirus and Internet Security
At first glance, the differences between Kaspersky Antivirus and Kaspersky Internet Security concern the scope of several features. However, the Internet Security suite offered far more comprehensive features than the antivirus suite.
- Kaspersky Antivirus, namely the new cybersecurity solutions available from Kaspersky, are compatible with mainstream operating systems for both desktops, such as the Windows and macOS operating systems and for smartphones, such as Android and iOS.
- Kaspersky Internet Security was only compatible with the Windows operating system and macOS, exposing a great software disadvantage.
- Kaspersky Antivirus provides your device with protection against malicious software, even if the malware source is a hard drive or an infected USB. This means the software’s protection wasn’t limited to malware from online sources only.
- Kaspersky Internet Security provides all the necessary precautions to protect your device online. The suite ensures your device’s safety from online malicious software, spyware or any data tracking malicious factor that shares your data illegally over the internet.
- Kaspersky Antivirus uses real-time protection, which means the immediate detection and elimination of any possible incoming threats, such as viruses, Trojans, spyware and rootkits, which conceal possible system vulnerability from the victim to continue exploiting it as an entry method.
- Kaspersky Internet Security was designed to scan and protect your email from spam, worked as an anti-phishing suite, an anti-malware and anti-adware and prevented data leaks. It worked on protecting your hard drive from any possibly harmful online threats such as malware and spam.
- Before Kaspersky updated its cybersecurity protection suites, Kaspersky Antivirus lacked a firewall feature, which is an irreplaceable feature that the Internet Security suite offered. A firewall is your first line of defence, and we cannot stress its importance enough.
- Moreover, Kaspersky Internet Security offers a HIPS prevention system, which works on suspicious behaviour over your network to detect and remove any detected malicious software.
- Kaspersky Antivirus lacked parental controls, anti-spam and anti-banner features. All features that Kaspersky Internet Security offered before its demise.
- While you could download Kaspersky Internet Security while using another third-party antivirus or anti-spyware software, this feature was not available for Kaspersky Antivirus.
- Kaspersky Internet Security provides protection from all web analytics tools, which track your browser settings or the pages you visit to display advertisements based on them. Kaspersky Antivirus provided no such protection.
- Kaspersky Internet Security provides webcam protection, which alerts you in case any malicious software attempts to activate your camera.
- The Internet Security suites provided a safe application mode, which checked all new applications against a global list of trusted applications and prevented ones that weren’t on the list from running or accessing the system. It also established a rule-based behavioural method to handle any applications that have root access or deal with your personal data.
- The cybersecurity suite also offered a secure keyboard feature, which prevented keyloggers from tracking your keystrokes and even allowed you to turn off your physical keyboard and use an on-screen keyboard to prevent detection. Moreover, it gives you a safe banking experience by protecting your banking data and credit card credentials.
- Kaspersky Internet Security had a system alert that notified you if any unauthorised changes were made to your system’s settings.
Can you still get Kaspersky Internet Security?
No. Kaspersky officially announced that it replaced this cybersecurity suite with its newest suites, the Standard, Plus and Premium plans.
Kaspersky Internet Security Alternative
The discontinued Internet Security suite was replaced with Kaspersky’s newest and enhanced suites, as we mentioned earlier. If you’re looking to get the same high level of protection the Internet Security once offered, we recommend Kaspersky’s Premium Plan. This plan includes all the features offered by its peers, in addition to continuous customer support, parental controls, identity protection, performance optimisation, effective detection and removal of online threats, a powerful firewall and protection against cryptojacking and ransomware.
Comparing cybersecurity products from the same parent company gives an in-depth insight into the company’s tools and techniques to fight cybercrimes and cyberattacks. If you’re hesitant about which Kaspersky product to begin with, you can try their free antivirus as a start.