SteelSeries SteelSecurity
Review by: Steve
Edited by: Ji4m
Provided by: SteelSeries
Price: $79 Canadian per one year subscription

Introduction:
A couple months ago we wrote a short article about our first impressions with the SteelSecurity Beta. This was SteelSeries's first venture into the software market with a full-on security suite for the hardcore gamer. It offered antivirus, spam filtering, firewall and individual game profiles to allow for customization. Being just a beta, things were bound to change before the final release so at the time we didn't go too in depth with it. However, the official release has now arrived and we have a copy in our hands for testing!

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Features:
Gaming Profiles
Gaming profiles allow you to customize the general, antivirus and firewall settings specific to each game you play. These profiles give you more indepth control over those areas than the general settings do, allowing you to be very specific on what you want to happen through the internet while playing. This extra level of customization allows you to cut down on the resources used for monitoring and monitor just what is needed for the game that your playing. An example would be if you're playing Battlefield 2 you can have the firewall open all the ports needed for the online play and disable the software's auto-update feature while playing the game. That'll make sure you'll have no background processes that'll either interrupt the game or hog network resources resulting in slower online play and connectivity problems.

Antivirus
You'll probably ask yourself why you should trust your computer's security and virus protection in the hands of a mouse pad and gaming audio product maker. Well, SteelSeries has actually teamed up with Bullguard when making the SteelSecurity program. All the definitions and updates are done directly through Bullguard, a trusted name in antivirus protection, firewalls, spam filtering and backups. Before initially running SteelSecurity I had, what I thought, was a very good and strong antivirus monitoring program. It seemed to catch the occasional threat that would find it's way to my computer so I figured it worked just fine. I installed SteelSecurity and ran the system scan it prompted me to do and little did I know there were 2 viruses on my computer that weren't previously detected by the other software! Now they weren't huge threats to my data, but the point is they were still there and undetected! So right away, I can tell you the antivirus portion of SteelSecurity is very strong with a great detection rate.

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Firewall
With beginner and advanced profiles available, the firewall can easily be used by any level of computer user. Acting like most other firewalls, when a program tries to access the internet you'll be prompted to allow or disallow it. The option to remember your choice and not be prompted in the future is also available. When allowed, the software will automatically open all required ports when that program makes access to the internet.

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