What Security do you use?

tradetime

and as you guessed it - it's slow as anything.

Which is "slow as anything?, if it's the XP then it is likely a problem other than the OS, but that is by the by.
For peeps who like the one stop, there is attraction to the all in one approach. Kasperski Internet Security seem to be well thought of
Personally I prefer the customised approach.
Avast or AVG
For firewall Online Armour Free gets good reviews.
Net nanny type proggies I know nothing about sorry.

tradetime

rancid-a wrote: »

Oh it can be, you just need to know where to look. I browse warez sites and the occasional x rated site I run Adaware & Spybot after every single internet session and they always come back with something. My Norton products usually show alerts 1-2 times a week, the last one on Friday, 'Bloodhound Morphine' That sounds ace doesn't it! Wonder what it would do if I let it in :rotfl:

LOL, I would suggest for your type of browsing you seriously consider something like Sandboxie

yus786

I understand people use Comodo Firewall but Comodo also do AV, AntiSpam, Internet Security etc.

Any tried them?

Here's the URL: http://www.comodo.com/products/free_products.html

Widowmaker_2

yus786 wrote: »

Can anyone recommend

1. Best AV
2. Best Internet Security
3. Best Firewall
4. Best Net nanny

The good think about Norton was the easy to use and the one stop shop....

Thanks

You are going to get so many conflicting reports, as everyone likes/dislikes stuff for different reasons...But scan through this thread, you will see the same proggies appearing over and over again!!

Namely AVG /Avast anti virus
Komodo Firewall
A GOOD ROUTER (very important)

Good net nanny?... No such thing in my opinion...and a major reason why your system is so slow I bet!

YOU should be the only 'Net Nanny'

tradetime

yus786 wrote: »

I understand people use Comodo Firewall but Comodo also do AV, AntiSpam, Internet Security etc.

Any tried them?

Here's the URL: http://www.comodo.com/products/free_products.html

I wouldn't recommend Comodo AV last I heard their detection rates weren't all that. With Comodo firewall I didn't suggest it because although it is imho a great firewall there have been numerous reports that the new version with the addition of HIPS component has become much more complicated for novices. I personally am still using ver 2.4.

If you do go for the new Comodo I'd suggest selecting to install with Defence+ disabled.

charlieheard

My father-in-law and wife have just got new PCs, one with a 30-day version of Mcafee, and one with a 90-day version of Norton. Now I'm happily way down the free route with AVG (from Avast) and Online Armor (from ZoneAlarm and Comodo) as well as various free Adware programs.

The problem is that the new PCs are running Vista. AVG wants me to uninstall the other packages, which seem unable to turn off just the AV, so this would leave them without a solid firewall. How good is the Vista firewal? OA and Kerio are not Vista-ready, and the latest versio of Comodo appears slightly flakey. ZoneAlarm is falling behind, and others appear too complicated for non-tech-savvy users. As their PC advisor, I'm in a bit of a quandary.

I'm tempted just to renew the packages for now until a solid, simple Vista firewall comes up - OA is promising things soon - but does anyone have any thoughts?

tradetime

I'd think the Vista firewall would be adequate for most users, particularly if they are behind a router with a hardware firewall. I used XP's for a while but wanted more control over outgoing applications

ChristopheB

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

My first line of defence is my ISP providing virus scanning of e-mail on their server and also blocking of NetBios ports 135 - 139.

My primary home line of defence is my hardware firewall. Along with NAT/port forwarding, I have it set up with Stateful Packet Inspection and blocking against all of ICMP ping flooding, IP spoofing, zero length IPs, Land Attacks, UDP Port Loopbacks, Snork Attacks, Smurf Attacks, Pings of Death, TCP Xmas Scans, TCP Null Scans, Win Nuke Attacks, TCP Syn Flooding, Ascend Kills, IMAP SYN/FIN Scans, Net Bus Scans and Back Orifice Scans. I also have it set up to block certain URLs and URL Keywords.

Additionally I use my firewall to DMZ a dummy LAN IP to provide full port stealthing.

For the wireless part of my network I have a unique SSID and SSID broadcast disabled, full MAC filtering and WPA-PSK encryption with a randomly generated 29-character hex key that I change weekly.

I use Network Stumbler and LAN Net Scan weekly to check my network integrity.

On the software side I use Eset's NOD32 virus scanner with internet, e-mail, office documents and system advanced heuristic scanning all enabled as a background task. I run a full scheduled system scan weekly.

For trojan protection I have Ewido Guard and PrevX running as background tasks, and run a full scheduled system scan with Ewido weekly.

To protect against spyware I have SpywareBlaster running in background (plus the overlapping protection provided by PrevX/Ewido). I use AdAware, Spybot S&D and HJT to scan weekly.

I have XP SP2 with Critical Updates enabled and my browser is Opera. For each website logon that I use (currently in excess of 200) I have unique randomly generated passwords easily managed using the excellent Opera 'Wand' feature and the freeware Password Safe. I change my financial passwords monthly.

I run an external security audit about once a month which costs me $10 US a year here.

Finally, I always follow the first three rules of computing:

Rule 1: Back up.

Rule 2: Back up.

Rule 3: Back up.

I achieve this using scheduled incremental images of all my disks with Acronis True Image 8. Oustanding application that uses a Linux live CD for its rescue disk.

Is all the above worth it? Yes, I never get problems with viruses and spyware.

Does it take up too much time? No, once it's all set up and running most of the tasks are automated and hands-off.

:cool:

TOG

That's a lot of security! If you are that paranoid you should consider not running Windows and go for a more secure operating system such as OpenBSD. I guess with the amount of security you have you know enough about computers to set this up. If you really need Windows you could run it in it's own virtual machine.

Oh nd make sure that hardware firewall has the latest firmware update.

superscaper

ChristopheB wrote: »

That's a lot of security! If you are that paranoid you should consider not running Windows and go for a more secure operating system such as OpenBSD. I guess with the amount of security you have you know enough about computers to set this up. If you really need Windows you could run it in it's own virtual machine.

Oh nd make sure that hardware firewall has the latest firmware update.

That post was almost 3 years ago! I'm sure much of that has since changed for TOG anyway. I know my security setup is nothing like it was 3 years ago.

charlieheard

tradetime wrote: »

I'd think the Vista firewall would be adequate for most users, particularly if they are behind a router with a hardware firewall. I used XP's for a while but wanted more control over outgoing applications

At the moment, the laptop has no internet connection, but I'm planning to add a wireless network to my home desktop PC - this may well be with a wireless router, but I'm trying to find out more about the best way to set things up.

The Vista desktop PC is just behind a modem from TalkTalk - it's connected via the ethernet port, but I'm not sure if it has a hardware firewall. I didn't find anything in the documentation when I set it up, but I didn't read all of it!

How good is the Vista firewall about blocking unwanted incoming stuff?