With all the malware floating around the Internet, it's important to protect your PC against the worst excesses. Although the focus of protection has shifted from anti-virus to anti-spyware applications, the best approach is still a full Internet security suite.

The Danish company Bullguard, best known for its bundling deals with tier-two UK manufacturers such as Evesham, now sells direct from its Web site, and version 8 of its Internet Security product includes a couple of useful extras.

Once installed, Bullguard Internet Security 8 offers a neat, well-designed control interface, with buttons to select between its main functions and tabbed panels for each of them, to tailor the options to your needs. The defaults are intelligent, though, so you probably won't need to alter much.

The anti-virus and spyware scans, while taking over an hour and a half to complete on our test PC (600,000-plus files), put little overhead on the system itself, so we could continue normal working. The program updates daily and informs you when it's done so.

The spam filter integrates with the most common e-mail agents, such as Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird, and shares spam information between Bullguard users, so when a new threat is seen on a few machines, it can quickly be blocked on all. E-mail phishing attempts are also spotted this way, but this protection doesn't extend to Web browsing, where you're given no warning if you follow a dubious link.

The main innovation in Bullguard Internet Security 8 is online backup. While there have been offerings in this market for some time, this is the first we've seen tied in with an Internet security suite. You get 5GB of online storage free with the product, shared between the three PCs on the Bullguard licence. You can buy more at £5.70 per gigabyte per year.

When backing up online, you only need to save your vital documents - things like the contents of 'My Documents' and important photos and audio - so 5GB should be adequate for home use. As a bonus, you can get at your backed-up files from any PC with Internet access, via Bullguard's secure Web site.

The other innovation is live support with remote access. Any problems with aspects of Bullguard Internet Security 8 can now be addressed not only by e-mailing the 24/7 support, but also by opening a live chat with a support operator. If necessary, that operator can be given access to your machine to sort out the Bullguard problem directly. This can only be done when you give explicit permission via the software.

The protection offered by Bullguard Internet Security 8 is pretty comprehensive and the new online backup and live support facilities are intelligent additions to the suite. So is the three-PC licence, which means your subscription can cover home and business desktops and a laptop in the one price. A sensible approach to an ongoing problem.