Pros & Cons
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- Excellent price for family identity protection
- Global VPN coverage
- Perfect antivirus lab scores
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- Identity protection lacks advanced tracking
- Poor score in hands-on malware protection test
- Annoying firewall pop-ups
ESET Home Security Ultimate Specs
| $1 Million Insurance | |
| Antispam | |
| Antivirus | |
| Application Privacy Scan | |
| Blocks Unwanted Calls | |
| Dark Web Monitoring | |
| Firewall | |
| Hardened Browser | |
| Identity Monitoring | |
| Identity Theft Remediation | |
| Monthly Credit Score | |
| Network Security Scan | |
| Parental Control | |
| Protection Type | Identity Protection |
| Snaps Photo of Thief | |
| Social Media Tracking | |
| VPN | Full |
| Warns of Insecure Wi-Fi | |
| Webcam Protection |
The core task of a security suite is to protect your devices and data. ESET Home Security Ultimate extends that protection beyond your devices. A VPN with a good spread of global servers protects your data as it travels outside your local devices, and an identity protection system both warns you when it finds exposed data and helps remediate identity theft events. It’s the most comprehensive security bundle from ESET, but Norton 360 With LifeLock and Bitdefender Ultimate Security remain our Editors’ Choice winners, as both offer stronger device-level security suite protection, as well as more comprehensive identity theft protection.
What Do You Get With ESET Home Security Ultimate?
ESET has switched from a typical security suite model to security bundles. That is, instead of integrating more and more components to build a single massive security app, ESET sells you packages of individual apps that can be managed from a single dashboard. ESET Home Security Premium adds VPN and encryption to the components of the company's simplest bundle, ESET Home Security Essential. And ESET Home Security Ultimate, reviewed here, further adds identity protection and a variety of security enhancements.
You manage this multitude of components through the ESET Home online dashboard. Once you log in, you can easily check all your subscriptions and protected devices. From the subscriptions page, it’s a snap to download protection for the current device or send an email link to install it on another device.
On the Devices page, you can quickly see if any of your devices have security issues. You drill down for details if there’s a problem, but there’s no remote configuration like what you get with Sophos Home Ultimate a few others. The online dashboard is also where you manage the anti-theft system. In addition, your identity protection lives entirely online.
How Much Does ESET Home Security Ultimate Cost?
Pricing for ESET Home Security Ultimate starts at $179.99 per year, which includes five licenses for device-level protection. As with ESET’s antivirus and security bundles, each additional license costs $5 per year, with a maximum of $204.99 per year for 10 licenses. IDShield costs about the same as ESET’s five-license price, but for just three licenses. IDX Complete, also for three licenses, costs almost twice as much, $355.32 per year.
Bitdefender Ultimate runs $159.99 for five licenses, but that subscription doesn’t include identity protection. For that, you need Bitdefender Ultimate Plus, which costs $189.99 for five licenses. Upgrading to Ultimate Plus Extended gets you the maximum level of identity protection for $60 more per year. You can pay $189.99 for a 10-license Norton subscription, or choose 5 licenses for $149.99.
A subscription for McAfee+ at the Advanced tier, the first tier that includes identity theft remediation, costs $199.99 per year. That’s a little more than ESET’s price, but with McAfee, you can install protection on all the devices in your household, whether they run Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, or even ChromeOS.
Does ESET Offer Family Identity Protection?
There’s another factor to consider: family. Most competitors protect just one individual, at least at the starting price. The basic ESET subscription covers two adults and unlimited children. IDShield charges $359.40 for two adults and unlimited children, though that also covers 15 devices.
As noted, McAfee+ covers all devices in your household. Extending identity coverage to two adults and four children raises the price to $269.99 per year. You pay a bit more, $299.99, for that same level of protection with Avast One Platinum. Note that the Avast family plan covers 30 devices, not far from unlimited. It also includes identity protection for up to five users.
Bitdefender offers two subscription plans: the individual plan mentioned above and a family plan. Protection for your family at the Ultimate Plus level costs $269.99. That gets you identity protection for five individuals and lets you install the local security suite on 25 devices. Bring the fam up to Ultimate Plus Extended, and that price jumps to $349.99.
Look to Norton for truly stratospheric subscription prices. With Norton, you choose identity protection at the Select, Advanced, or Ultimate Plus level, with added features and increased monetary remedies at each level. Its family plans cover two adults and five children. At the three levels, the yearly subscription prices are $389.99, $599.99, and $819.99, respectively.
ESET's pricing beats the competition if you’re looking for identity protection for more users than just yourself.
Getting Started With ESET Home Security Ultimate
As with other ESET suites, you start your journey by logging in to the ESET Home dashboard and registering your activation key. You can now download protection on the current device (Windows, macOS, or Android), or ESET can send you an email with an installation link to protect a different device.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)When logged in to ESET Home, you can install the main security suite or the VPN. At the Ultimate tier, reviewed here, you can also install VPN protection directly on your router. I’ll dig into that last option below. In previous versions, you had the option to install the password manager and (for Android devices) parental control. However, password management and Android parental control are no longer part of this suite.
The Ultimate Level of Protection
When installing protection on a Windows device, you get ESET Security Ultimate, which strongly resembles ESET's other suite and antivirus products. Its main Overview window displays six large button panels with a color-coded status banner above. Clicking a link reveals two more buttons, for a total of eight: VPN, Browser Privacy & Security, Identity Protection, ESET Folder Guard, Secure Data, Network Inspector, Anti-Theft, and Safe Banking & Browsing.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)In reviewing ESET Home Security Premium, I found the same panels, except for Folder Guard, which is included in Premium. In fact, Premium and Ultimate are so similar that I don’t see a need to rehash everything I reported about Premium. Please take a moment to read my full review of ESET Home Security Premium. Then come back here to learn about the enhancements and additions you get by upgrading to Ultimate.
Additional Ransomware Remediation
ESET Home Security Essential includes ransomware protection as part of its antivirus component. When I tested only the ransomware layer, without help from the regular antivirus, it missed several real-world ransomware attacks. Even when protection succeeded, the ransomware frequently encrypted many files before behavioral detection kicked in.
ESET Home Security Premium adds another ransomware-fighting component. Folder Guard protects all files in the folders you specify, such as Documents, Desktop, and Pictures. If any unauthorized program attempts to modify a protected program, ESET displays a warning that lets you quarantine the attacker (or add a legitimate program to the trusted list). Folder Guard caught all ransomware attacks that the basic ransomware detection system missed. However, it didn’t prevent files from being encrypted outside the protected folders.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)With the Ultimate edition reviewed here, ESET adds yet another ransomware defense: Ransomware Remediation. Its configuration isn’t easy to find. From Advanced Settings, you open the HIPS page. Scrolling to the bottom, you open Ransomware Shield. Here you can see that this feature protects almost 120 file types, including common document and picture formats, archive formats, and more. Unlike Folder Guard, this feature is enabled and configured for maximal protection by default.
For testing purposes, I disconnected the test virtual machine from the network and the internet. I left Folder Guard disabled, as it is by default. And I turned off all antivirus layers except those related to ransomware. Next, I launched each of my ransomware samples in turn. As with other ESET suites, the two whole-disk encrypting ransomware attacks succeeded. That’s no surprise, since all the ransomware-specific elements of this app aim to protect against the more common file-encrypting ransomware.
Out of a dozen ransomware attacks on the test system’s files, four were thoroughly defeated by ESET, caught and blocked with no damage to the test system. One didn’t do anything, a common occurrence. Two ran to completion, encrypting files without any hindrance from ESET—but note that in a separate test, Folder Guard blocked these two.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)For just two of the dozen samples, Ransomware Remediation kicked in, reporting that it discovered ransomware and offering to show which files it recovered. I observed that it avoided deleting the encrypted file versions, in case they later proved useful. And it appended “_restored” to the filename of the recovered files.
ESET detected and quarantined the remaining three ransomware samples, but all of them encrypted some files before being caught. One encrypted more than a thousand files. And Ransomware Remediation did nothing.
There’s no question that this is a useful feature. In testing, when it worked, it worked perfectly. Between behavioral detection, Folder Guard, and Ransomware Remediation, ESET detected and eliminated all my file-encrypting samples. There are still cases where the ransomware encrypts files before its demise; I’m hoping that going forward, Ransomware Remediation will catch more of these.
Browser Extension Enhancements
As part of its installation, ESET offers to add a browser extension to Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. Don’t look for it right away; the extension offer appears the first time you launch each browser after rebooting your system. I’d prefer that it didn’t wait for a reboot, as some users only reboot when forced to by a Windows update.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)The basic browser extension features include browser cleanup, safe search, and website security inspector. That last item helps you avoid visiting dangerous or fraudulent websites. Browser cleanup duplicates the Shift+Ctrl+Del behavior in modern browsers, letting you delete things like history and cookies over a specified time period. And safe search marks up search results as safe or dangerous.
Upgrading to Ultimate adds two new items to the extension: Website Settings Review and Metadata Cleanup. I found the former puzzling. Clicking its panel just opened a page stating, “Easily access and manage website permissions to control what information websites can use.” But the page was otherwise blank.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Do you ever upload photos to online discussion groups? You may be giving away information that would be better kept private. Modern image, video, and sound file formats include what’s called EXIF data. Some of this data is innocuous, things like image dimensions and camera maker. But EXIF data can also include the exact GPS coordinates where the picture was taken, and the exact time it was snapped. Anybody who views that pic online can find out where it was taken, which may well reveal exactly where you live.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)If that bothers you, just turn on Metadata Cleanup. Now, when you upload a picture, ESET strips out the too-personal information. Non-personal details like the image dimensions and color depth remain, but the pic is no longer a treasure map to your home.
Install VPN Protection on Your Router
You’ve known for years that you need antivirus protection to prevent malware from infecting your devices. Your devices and data should be safe once you’ve cleared out any pre-existing conditions and activated real-time protection. However, when you send and receive data across the internet, your local antivirus protection no longer applies.
A virtual private network (VPN) protects your data in transit, encrypting it and sending it to a VPN server, which then forwards it to the wider internet. Nobody, not even the owner of the network you’re using, can interfere with that encrypted transmission, and the websites you’re connecting to see the VPN server as the traffic source, hiding your personal IP address and location.
You get ESET’s VPN at both the Premium and Ultimate levels. The only real difference is that Premium users get 3 VPN licenses, while Ultimate users get 10. That being the case, I’ll refer you to my review of ESET Home Security Premium for details about the core VPN. Briefly, it’s powered by the well-regarded Windscribe VPN, has servers worldwide (mostly in Europe and North America), and offers an unusually broad set of protocol options.
The big difference with Ultimate is the opportunity to install VPN protection on your home network’s router. When the router itself connects to a VPN server, it protects internet traffic for every device on your network. That includes all your computers and mobile devices, of course. But it also includes devices that don’t have the capability to run an onboard VPN, things like video doorbells and smart garage door openers.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)You start the process by logging in to the ESET Home dashboard and working through the steps to choose VPN for Router. Next, you must choose a protocol: WireGuard or OpenVPN. You also choose a server location for setup. As you can see, the router-based VPN isn’t as flexible and configurable as the onboard software. To finish this phase, you download a configuration file to your computer.
The next step seems innocent enough. It advises you to open your router’s web interface and install the downloaded configuration file. But…do you know how to do that? I checked with PCMag’s VPN analyst, Justyn Newman, and our router expert, John Delaney. They confirmed that, in the typical consumer setup with an ISP-owned router, the necessary level of user control is simply not possible.
Suppose you’re enough of a network expert that you’ve installed your own third-party router. If it’s an Asus or TP-Link router, you’re in luck, as ESET provides detailed instructions for installing the configuration file. Do note that we’ve honored both brands with our Editors’ Choice designation, meaning they’re among the best routers. Those using another router brand will have to figure out the process on their own.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Even if you do successfully install ESET’s VPN protection on your router, you’re not done. If any of your devices routinely connect to other networks (as laptops, tablets, and smartphones do), you will have to install ESET’s VPN component on those devices. Otherwise, leaving the home network would mean leaving protection behind.
This is a great feature for a very small audience. Most consumers simply can’t make use of it, and few of those who can have the network expertise to do so.
Family-Friendly Identity Protection
Identity theft protection is a popular add-on above and beyond the typical components of a security suite. In a few cases, notably Norton and its LifeLock subsidiary, the security company handles identity protection internally, but most must rely on a third-party provider with strong identity protection. Like Avast One Platinum, Bitdefender Ultimate, and Malwarebytes Ultimate, ESET partners with TransUnion’s IdentityForce. ESET's identity system will look familiar if you’ve seen any of the others.
Getting Started with ESET Identity Protection
You begin your identity journey at the ESET Home online dashboard; a click causes it to email you an access code. Using that code, you create your identity protection account. I did note an odd comment from the program stating that it might take up to 24 hours to receive the code. In testing, it took 20 minutes.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)As with similar services, you start by entering basic contact information and agreeing to the terms and conditions. You also set a password specific to the identity account, along with three security questions. Yes, security questions can become a security nightmare if you use answers that a hacker could find by searching. ESET offers three dozen choices for questions, more than most, but you still need to pick answers that nobody but you would know. You could also answer with lies, though, of course, you must remember those lies.
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Multi-factor authentication is also required. You can choose to receive security codes via email, text, or voice. Verify your identity with TransUnion, and you’re ready to go.
Identity Protection Dashboard
The dashboard serves as your base of operations for identity matters. As with Bitdefender and Avast, it initially displays a list of five tasks under the heading “Let’s Get Started.” These are:
- Create your Profile
- Add your Additional Information
- Add your Social Media Accounts
- Check out your Password Manager
- Lost Wallet Assistance
Each of these is worth 20% toward completion of your introductory tasks, and you’ve already earned 20% by creating your profile. You can work down the list and complete each task, or just do a tiny amount of each and return to it later. Either way, once you reach 100%, you can hide the task list and get a full view of the dashboard.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)You can open a menu down the left side of the display with seven items: Dashboard, Identity Vault, BreachIQ, Alerts, Credit, Resources, and Support. The dashboard itself lists the five most recent alerts, with a link to the full list. On the right side are panels explaining how to contact an identity resolution specialist and how to prepare and use your lost wallet data. Scroll down for stats for the most recent identity, credit, and social media scans. Finally, there’s a simple protection score from 0 to 100, with 100 indicating maximum protection.
Stash Your Details in the Identity Vault
Select Identity Vault from the menu, and you’ll see that you already have some protected personal data. The contact items you entered during registration, along with any additional information you added during startup, are there. The vault has three pages, identified by tabs across the top. On the Monitored Info page, you can record one for each of the following:
- Address
- Date of Birth
- Driver’s License
- Mother’s Maiden Name
- Social Security Number
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Most identity protection systems treat these items as singular, though Norton lets you track up to five physical addresses, and McAfee handles two driver’s licenses. In various spots on the page, you can also record information in these categories:
- Bank Account
- Credit/Debit Card
- IBAN (International Bank Account Number)
- Medical Insurance ID
- Passport
- Phone
You can enter five passports and 10 of the other types. There’s also an option to upload scans of these documents on the Secure Storage tab, up to 100MB of images.
At the bottom of the Monitored Info Page, you can link ESET with your social media accounts, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. ESET works with partners Sontiq and ZeroFox to review your posts and their comments for potential issues, and to warn you if they detect personal information or inappropriate contact.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Preparing for a Lost Wallet
In addition to securely archiving images of passports and similar documents, the Secure Storage tab is where you make advanced preparations to handle a lost wallet. It’s a simple matter of dragging your wallet out of your pocket or purse and recording everything you find in it, specifically these types of items:
- Bank Account
- Combination
- Credit/Debit Card
- Customer Rewards Card
- Driver's License
- ID Card
- Medical ID Card
- Passport
- Social Security Card
Just because you recorded some of these items for monitoring doesn’t mean they'll appear on the lost wallet list. For lost wallet protection, you fill in every detail down to the card issuer’s website and the customer service phone number.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Dealing With Alerts
Once you’ve recorded personal information for monitoring, ESET immediately starts checking whether any of your data is being bandied about on the dark web. For every problem it finds, you get an alert. As noted, the Dashboard displays your five most recent alerts. To see them all, click See More below those five, or choose Alerts from the menu on the left.
The list of alerts could be more informative. For each alert, it shows the date of discovery, not the date of the actual breach. It displays the type of concern, such as data found on the dark web, but no information about which website was involved. To see those important details, you must open each alert in turn.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)The detail page for each alert includes advice on what actions to take. When you’ve done what you can, you click to Archive the alert. Serious alerts, such as account takeover risks, may come with an Open Case button that connects you to a resolution specialist. A separate tab helps you track those open cases.
Reviewing alerts is tedious, in no small part, because every time you close the one you’re viewing, the list snaps back to the top. Your best bet is to go through them individually, archiving them as you go. When you’ve cleared the initial cluster of reports, new alerts will stand out.
Social Media Tracking Alerts
In addition to personal data exposure alerts, the Alerts page also reports any alerts generated by the social media monitor. If you share personal data on social media, ESET should warn you, though this warning comes long after your privacy gaffe hits the interwebs. It also checks posts and comments for inappropriate verbiage, but as with most similar monitors, it is prone to false positives. For example, I posted a YouTube video of scrub jays dive-bombing a peanut offering. It got flagged for violence due to the word “bomb.”
IDX Complete tracks social media in a similar fashion, with similar false positives. So does IDShield. IDShield also offers a separate Reputation Management component for social media, a feature that proved seriously unreliable in testing.
BreachIQ and Safety Rating
While ESET alerts you on all types of dark web data detections, the BreachIQ page focuses on known data breaches that expose your personal information. This page has five tabs: ID Safety Score, My Breach Exposures, Action Plan, Search Breaches, and FAQ.
The My Breach Exposures tab lists the date of each breach, a Breach Risk Rating, and some of the exposed data types. Clicking a link lets you see all data types exposed in the breach.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)On the ID Safety Score page, you see a dial representing your risk score. A score of 100 means you’re perfectly protected—I don’t imagine that happens often. Equally unlikely is a score of 0, meaning you’re not protected at all. My test account came in at 52. The score page also lists some factors that affected the rating. If you want to raise a poor protection rating, ESET covers you—just skip to the Action Plan page.
Some components of your Action Plan set clear tasks for you to complete, such as setting up fraud alerts on your credit report or requesting a PIN from the IRS. Others are relatively vague, like telling you to watch out for spam. As you take care of each item, you mark it as complete. Once you’ve gone through many of these items, your ID Safety Score should rise. I paged through the list, found several vague ones like “Beware of social engineering,” and marked them complete. Doing so raised my safety score to 63, a definite improvement.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)If you find any concepts related to data breaches and exposures unclear, the FAQ tab should help clarify them. There’s also a page where you can search all known data breaches to see if a specific company has been hit. I’m not sure why that would matter, given you’ve already been notified about breaches that affect you personally.
Tracking and Managing Your Credit
If a crook opens a credit account based on your stolen credit information, that affects your credit score. Pretty much any attempt at identity theft will cause a change. That’s why keeping an eye on your credit score is essential. The Credit page of ESET’s identity protection, reached by clicking Credit in the left-side menu, has four tabs: Credit Score, Credit Report, Credit Simulator, and Freeze My Credit.
The main Credit Score page pulls your score from TransUnion once a month. After you’ve been using the system for a while, the Credit Score Tracker graph shows how things have changed. This page also offers a link to set a yearly reminder to place a fraud alert on your credit report. Adding this alert simply notifies creditors to take extra steps to verify your identity before extending credit.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)On the Credit Report page, you can view the details from your latest report as formatted by ESET or print out the whole report for reference. ESET updates your score and reports monthly. Note that you can get your annual reports from all three credit agencies for free, with no involvement by ESET.
Opening the Freeze My Credit page in ESET’s identity protection system displays links to impose a credit freeze with TransUnion, Experian, or Equifax. Bitdefender offers the same DIY style, while Aura can freeze your Experian credit with just a click.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Many financial actions can affect your credit score, but you won’t know about those effects until the next monthly score update. Wouldn’t it be nice to know the effect on your score before you cancel a credit card or take out a car loan? ESET’s Credit Simulator lets you game out the results of 17 common financial events. These include, among other things, adding a new credit card, paying off all your cards, and letting an account go delinquent. Of course, the estimated new score isn’t guaranteed, but you can learn a lot by experimenting in the simulator.
Resources for Identity and Credit Protection
To reach 100% in the list of startup configuration tasks, you had to at least peek at the Resources page. This page is worth more than a glance. It’s divided into three tabs: Calculators, Forms, and Junk Mail & Calls.
On the Calculators tab, you’ll find a variety of financial calculators. For example, you can compare two mortgage options—it’s amazing how much less interest you pay overall for a 15-year mortgage than a 30-year one. If you’re unsure whether to buy or lease a car, you can plug in all the numbers and get a summary. These are calculators hosted by TransUnion, not links to some random external resource.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Sometimes, you just need to sort out a misunderstanding with the credit company. The Forms page presents letter templates for various purposes, including resolving a credit dispute. You’ll also find resources such as consumer action handbooks, consumer contacts for major corporations, and contacts for federal, state, and local consumer protection offices.
While not directly related to your credit and identity, junk mail and robocalls are annoying. A surfeit of spam letters might even mask more important mailed communications. The Junk Mail & Calls page contains links to external sites where you can remove yourself from direct marketing lists, opt out of preapproved credit offers, and reject specific direct mailings.
Your Dedicated Resolution Specialist
As noted, some alerts and breach warnings come with a built-in button to open a resolution case. If you find that your details are for sale on the dark web, ESET can help. Click the Support tab and start a help ticket, or call the provided number to speak with a dedicated identity theft resolution specialist.
A promise to pay up to $1 million to remediate identity theft is the norm in this field, and ESET matches that offer. As always, this comes with some restrictions. For example, if you lose your job due to identity theft, it covers only eight weeks of lost wages, up to $1,500 per week. The insurance covers up to $1,000 for travel required for remediation. Norton, however, doesn’t focus on sub-limits like these in its coverage.
As always, I can’t test this service’s ability to help with recovery from identity theft. I can report, however, that it’s very easy to open a case.
Protecting Your Family
Most identity protection systems protect just one individual or charge extra to protect additional family members. ESET is unusual because its basic subscription covers you, your partner, and any number of children. Extending protection to another family member starts by clicking your name in the top-right corner of the ESET Identity Protection Page, then choosing Manage Account.
(Credit: ESET/PCMag)Scroll down to the Family Protection panel, which has links to Add an Adult Household Member and Add Child Monitoring. For the former, you fill in basic contact info, including an email address. Your partner receives an email with instructions for setting up their identity protection account. Credit monitoring for a child is necessarily limited; you handle filling in the child’s data, which requires a valid SSN.
ESET specifically offers identity theft support for deceased family members, provided they were enrolled in identity protection before their death.
What’s Not Here?
While ESET, Bitdefender, and Avast rely on the same partner for identity protection, they don’t offer the same services. ESET’s protection closely matches Bitdefender’s basic offering, but you can pay extra for a Plus account with Bitdefender. That Plus account is backed by $2 million and includes a $50,000 ransomware-specific fund. It tracks three credit bureaus, not just one. Avast offers this Plus-level coverage by default.
Avast, Aura, IDShield, and Norton monitor bank accounts and credit cards for anomalous transactions. Bitdefender adds transaction tracking at its Plus level. Getting instant notification of an unauthorized transaction can help nip identity theft in the bud. However, it’s not a feature of ESET’s identity protection.
Other advanced features Avast and Bitdefender Ultimate Plus share include watching for spurious address change requests, tracking court records in case your identity is misused, and monitoring the sex offender registry. Norton reserves many tracking features for its Advanced level, including monitoring phone takeovers, checking criminal records, and detecting misuse of your address. At the most expensive Ultimate Plus level, Norton adds monitoring of home titles, 401-K plans, social media, and the sex offender registry.
ESET handles the basics of identity protection, but as you can see, some competing services do quite a bit more.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: ESET)
ESET Home Security Ultimate
ESET Home Security Ultimate builds on the company's Premium security bundle, enhancing ransomware protection and adding an identity protection system for the whole family.