If your priority is to stay safe, there are two good reasons to choose G Data Total Protection: its twin malware detection engines. G Data combines its own engine with Bitdefender’s, which is also a reliable performer, helping to keep those detection scores high.

It’s better known in its native Germany than in the UK, which is why it isn’t tested so widely; the UK-based SE Labs doesn’t test G Data, and even in AV-Test (based in Austria) we had to go back to February 2023 for results, where it provided 100% protection.

AV-Comparatives is based in Germany and unsurprisingly covers G Data much more frequently, and here it provided a strong set of scores, albeit not the best. Most recently, it returned a solid 99.6% protection rating with eight false positives. That’s just short of the clean sweep we saw last year, but if you’d spent the past 12 months using G Data then it’s very unlikely you will have experienced a malware infection.

There’s no shortage of scan options if you’re concerned. You can run or schedule a full malware scan, or scan specific files or directories, your computer’s memory and startup processes, removable media, and also check for rootkits. Other options under Virus Protection allow you to access quarantined files or burn a bootable rescue image to a CD or USB drive.

G Data Total Protection’s features haven’t changed in any major way since last year’s review, which is both good and bad. For example, it’s good that you’re prompted to install a plugin for Edge, but you’ll find references to Internet Explorer scattered throughout the G Data suite. Indeed, parts of the application feel oriented towards Windows operating systems that have been end-of-life for years, and include extra features that cater to older PC hardware configurations. Discontinued browsers, apps and web services appear in configuration settings and additional software tools, though the disk defragmenter at least automatically excludes drives that it detects to be SSDs. You can override this, but we strongly advise against it.

As we observed last year, the parental controls include an option to block all SSL sites, otherwise known as most of the modern internet. They otherwise work as you’d expect, but that’s still not as helpful as Microsoft Family Safety, unless you’d rather not create Microsoft accounts for your children. G Data’s password manager is particularly poor, minimally documented, and still only has plugins for Google Chrome and Internet Explorer. Use a dedicated password manager instead.

More sensibly, as many people are still on modest internet connections and need as few delays to their downloads as possible, only downloads of up to 10MB are checked by the G Data Web protection tool by default. The files will also be checked once they’ve been downloaded, but if you’ve got a fast PC and internet connection to match, you might want to disable this option.

G Data’s firewall is simple and easy to work with, and its default autopilot is hassle-free. The backup tool supports differential and incremental backups of any selected files and folders, on the schedule of your choice, to physical media, a network location or a synced storage drive.

Unexpectedly, if you’re in the UK, G Data will be sold to you in US dollars, which means $50 for a one-device subscription, $66 for three devices and $82 for five devices. Whether you buy from a third-party retailer (good luck) or from G Data directly, there are no hidden price hikes after the first year of subscription, which is a real strength compared to its rivals.

G Data Total Security is the premium version of the company’s antivirus software, available on Windows and macOS, with iOS and Android apps to go with it. However, we actually recommend that you buy G Data Internet Security ($40) instead, as this gets you the powerful antivirus engines, plus the firewall, quarantine, cross-platform protection and parental controls – without the performance tuning and encryption tools, or the clunky password manager. You miss out on the device access controls and backup tool, which is one of the best we’ve seen built into an AV suite, but let’s not forget that Duplicati is free.

In truth, we still find the client’s old-school looks rather endearing, and love all the little touches – such as USB keylogger detection and the ability to include only some of the security suite’s features at install time – but it could do with updates for the Windows 11 era (and Windows 10 era), particularly when it comes to its privacy tools.

Nonetheless, G Data provides straightforward, effective and inexpensive protection against malware and other threats to your system, making it one of our favorite security suites, despite its quirks.

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D-Link is aiming to take surveillance in new directions with its DSS-200G series of Layer 2 switches, which are designed to power the latest IP cameras and provide automated recovery services. This family of four switches is headed up by the 28-port DSS-200G-28MPP, which has a punchy power budget of 518W and offers support for 90W 802.3bt PoE services.

We reviewed the DSS-200G-28MP model, which sits on the rung below and offers a more modest 370W power budget with 30W 803.2at services available across all 24 gigabit ports. Both have four pairs of unpowered copper and fiber dual-personality gigabit ports for uplinks to a network video recorder (NVR) or server.

The switch can power any PoE-compliant device, but D-Link has focused primarily on surveillance usage. It incorporates 6kV surge protection circuitry to shield external cameras against lightning strikes.

One common feature of the DSS-200G series is the block of five DIP switches at the front, which are used to hard-set certain features. The first switch sets an ingress priority function so packets entering port 1 have the highest priority while those incoming on port 24 have the lowest.

The second switch enables a PoE extend mode on the first eight ports. This overcomes the 100-metre PoE cable length limitation by allowing powered devices (PDs) to be placed up to 250 meters away but, in common with all PoE extenders, it drops speed to 10Mbits/sec.

The third switch activates an isolation function so packets incoming on a “controlled” port will only be forwarded to a designated uplink port. This is a handy security feature; it means that if an IP camera is compromised, the intruder can’t gain access to any others attached to the switch.

Next up is D-Link’s PD-Alive function, which pings the IP address of a device to check availability and, if it doesn’t respond for a specific time, will reset its PoE services and send out notifications, although for traps, only the less secure SNMPv2 is supported. Lastly, the fifth DIP switch enables STP, which uses redundant paths to restore connections due to a link failure.

Two management modes are available, and selecting the standard option from the quick start wizard presents a web interface with access to every switch feature. From here, you can configure all Layer 2 functions, create surveillance and voice VLANs, assign one of three PoE priorities to each port and enable the global ONVIF service so all compliant IP cameras are discovered and placed in a separate VLAN.

The surveillance mode presents a completely different interface with a smart graphical topology view showing all ports and attached devices. After we connected three D-Link PoE IP cameras, they were identified and automatically assigned icons with the correct model photo.

Add non-D-Link cameras and, as long as they’re ONVIF-compliant, the switch assigns a generic camera icon but won’t identify their make or model. Devices such as our Netgear Wi-Fi 6 APs were simply classed as “other” but, in all cases, PoE services can be manually recycled to force a remote reboot.

The graphical theme continues with the console offering a filtered view showing only IP cameras along with their IP addresses and power consumption. You can keep a close eye on total power consumption and switch stats from the surveillance overview page, set schedules to control when power is provided to selected ports and configure the PD-Alive function on individual ports instead of using the fourth DIP switch.

The web console is mainly concerned with surveillance functions and offers greatly reduced access to switch settings. This isn’t a problem, though, as you can swap back to the standard mode if you need to tweak something and then return to surveillance mode.

The DSS-200G-28MP is a worthy contender for business surveillance duties as it offers plenty of smart IP camera management and monitoring features. Value looks good, too, as it includes a generous PoE budget, but you’ll need to focus on D-Link’s IP cameras to get the best from it.

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SMBs that want a cloud file-sharing service that snaps neatly into their existing workflows will love Box, as it offers more app integrations than most of its rivals – over 1,500 in fact. Even better, admins can control which third-party apps are to be made available, and users can browse and install them directly from their personal web portal.

There’s a lot more to Box than that, however. It’s packed to the gills with collaboration tools: along with the obligatory cloud file-sharing and syncing services, it provides facilities for issuing file upload requests to external users, strong access controls for shared files, Box Preview for viewing and editing files in a browser without downloading them, Box Relay for automating repetitive tasks and Box Notes for taking real-time meeting minutes.

The new Box Canvas adds an extra sharing dimension that allows you to create secure virtual whiteboard sessions. Users can access this from their web portal, start sessions, invite other users and employ a selection of templates as well as drawing and editing tools to create interactive meetings, training sessions and more.

Box is available in five plans, with the Business Plus on review starting at three users and costing £20 each per month when billed annually. It enables a 15GB maximum file size, a 50-file version history, includes initial access to ten app integrations and gives value a big boost by offering unlimited cloud storage.

User onboarding is swift and they’ll find the web portal very easy to use. It opens with an overview of all their files and folders, and shows the most recent documents across the top. The left menu bar provides one-click access to all tools including Notes, Relay and Canvas.

When sharing content with team members, users can apply one of seven access permissions, ranging from viewing only to full editorial rights, and receive notifications when anyone accesses them. Box Collections is a smart feature that allows users to organize files, folders and web links in personal logical groups in their web portal without having to create new shared folders for them.

Install the local Box Drive app from the portal’s Sync page and you’ll receive a mapped drive with quick access to cloud files. You can mark any for offline access so they’re downloaded and stored locally and changes made are synced back to the cloud when internet access is restored.

Microsoft Teams users will find the Box app a worthy addition. We added it to our Teams desktop app and, after logging into a Box account, it presented an interface that’s a near-perfect replica of the web portal.

Business Plus supports unlimited external collaborators – people outside your organisation that are invited to work with you on shared files. They require a Box account to access them, but this isn’t a deal breaker as when we shared a file using an email address outside our account domain, the user was prompted to create a free Box Individual account, which provides 10GB of cloud storage and a 250MB file upload limit.

There are no such limitations on file upload requests, as external users don’t need a Box account for this. Users select a folder, create a file request, paste the web link into an email and send it to the recipient, who drags the required files into the web page to send them.

Box Business Plus delivers a superb range of cloud file-sharing and collaboration tools at a price that is sure to appeal to SMBs. It supports an incredible range of app integrations and tools, delivers strong access controls and neatly amalgamates everything into a well-designed web portal.

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