Best Security Software

What do you consider to be the best security software?

-Lightweight
-Virus active monitoring and scheduled scanning
-Malware active monitoring and scheduled scanning
-Firewall

 

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http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=l&ai=...tp://www.avg-antivirus.net/compare-chart.html

It is free but the one you buy is even better. I have it and it's 30.00 or so per year.

 

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I second Cosmic concerning AVG. The free version is really better than most paid subscriptions and it fits your required criteria quite well. I even uninstalled McAfee from my computer here at work and replaced it with AVG. IT wasn't happy, but hey I was the only one with a working computer when our corporation was hit the printer virus

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Has anybody used Comodo? I have been using Comodo for about a year. The Anti-Virus is pretty good. It monitors and does scheduled scans. But when I shut it off, I can see it still running in the processes.
The Comodo firewall has a malware scanner, but does not have active malware monitor. It also seems to run in the background even after I shut it off.

 

I was looking at Comodo's specs, not too impressive and the fact that it doesn't close is puzzling. What do you exactly mean it runs in the background when you shut it off?

 

I shut off both the bloody antivirus and the firewall. I checked my processes, and they were still running. Even after I closed them and the warning popped up.

As for AVG, I used to use it, and it seemed to be a resource hog. I've been searching around, and there are different articles saying it's a resource hog.

CA and Avira seem to be low on resources. Especially CA, but I saw that test results for CA were pretty bad while Avira did pretty well on most tests. Has anybody tested out Avira?

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Comodo in itself creates problems. I mean if these anti virus companies would be so good they'd run out of business

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As to your point about AVG being a resource hog, the system requirements for the Home Edition along with Firewall is 256MB of RAM. Now unless your computer is 2 decades old most computer have at least 1GB nowadays. And I myself play my fair share of video games which are maybe the greatest resource hogs of all, and I have not experienced any noticeable difference in performance. But hey that's just me and my tweaked out PC heh

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You don't have to run Anti-virus programs all the time, they should only really be loaded when you need them. Like when you are doing a test on your folder structures or any new files that have been downloaded from the internet.

 

I don't even run anti-virus on my computer anymore. Most of the infected machines I get at work already have Norton or Mcafee already loaded on them...lotta good they did.

To me, they just take up resources. If my machine gets infected, I just wipe it.

 

Heh its true, you don't really need any kind of protection if you don't do what you're not suppose to do.

 

That's not true at all. Many sites like Youtube have stuff they try to put into other peoples machines as well as many other sites I've been to. Email is also a problem area as well. You can get stuff that comes with Emails that can infect your PC rather quickly.

 

I am not saying that you are impervious to an attack. But if you don't open suspicious attachments or links, and install unneeded apps/plugins, you should be far in the safe zone. This is why people such as video editors for example, dealing with huge lengthy projects, not only purchase Macs for the legendary immunity to 99.999% of viruses but they don't even hook their machines up to the internet to avoid the slightest chance of disruption.

And unless you have fiddled with your computer settings, nothing can install itself without the user initiating the process. That's why I'd always laugh when people would call me with their problems when I worked in the IT department, and I'd ask them if they did anything that might have caused the issue, and the answer 90% of the time would be, "No! I didn't touch a thing! It just happened on its own." Not to say that things sometimes don't happen on their own, but when dealing with computers, if the user didn't initiate a process, and its not programmed in the computer it can't execute. If it would (next level of AI), I'd be very, very afraid.

 

Avira Antivir Premium -

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Spyware Doctor -

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The combination of those two is the best you can run on a windows PC. Period.

 

ESET Smart Security (aka. NOD32) by far. The built in firewall is my favorite, it'll throw up a warning when any program tries to access the internet and gives you the option to create a rule for it either to allow or deny the program in the future. I've tried just about all the anti virus programs at one point or another and this one's been my favorite.

Downside is it's not free ($60/year), unless you 'get it for free'. If you want something free then Avira is a good bet.

 

Did I mention AVG is free and extremely user friendly. Takes no skill at all

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This is complete nonsense, some of the most ridiculous stuff I've seen posted on the internet, and that's saying something.

Are you joking here? Am I not in on the joke?

 

1) I guess you haven't seen 2 Girls, 1 Cup
2) I am not joking.
3) If what I said was a joke, am I in on it?

and

4) Do you mind being a little more descriptive why you think "This is complete nonsense, some of the most ridiculous stuff I've seen posted on the internet."

But in all fairness I will not necessarily say that what I said was not slightly exaggerated, but I believe it holds more than just a little bit of truth. Also Mabuse I recommend being a little more productive in your future responses. Disagreement is most definitely necessary but only when it comes along with reason.

 

NOD32 works great for me on Windows Vista, though I use Linux 99% of the time.

 

I have a simple method:

• AVG free version not that it gets used much.
• Mozilla Firefox Browser.
• Spywareblaster (This is a must, stops ActiveX installs etc. So it attempts to stop viruses from infecting your computer, as opposed to trying to remove an infection from your computer. Anti-virus software is like the Morning After pill, in comparison to this Condom.)
• Although I use Outlook Express on my XP system (and now "Windows Mail" on Vista), I tend to use IMAP over POP, I rig my program to only download Headers (This contains who a mails from and it's subject), ontop of that I also rig the main to only be displayed in "Text", not HTML. There are also settings that strip away most of the content, however if I want to find out what links are on there or what text is being displayed that's been filtered, I'll actually look at the pure SOURCE which isn't interpreted by the mail program or browsers.
• If I travel to websites that I'm not sure about I use this prefix for the URL:view-source:, an example entry to a browser bar would be: view-source:http://www.sciforums.com (To test copy and paste that entry to your browser URL bar)
• One other thing is I have my own Personal External Router with built in Firewall, this is an obvious factor because it lessens the visable number of ports that are open to "potential" exploitation, which means even if a trojan was on my machine and waiting for commands, if it's passive and doesn't attempt to connect out then it will be blocked. Otherwise if it attempts to connect out, it can be spotted via a Netstat on my PC or Router logs.

As for Viral infections:
Originally Most Viruses were Scripting in Visual Basic, or required the Windows Scripting Host (Which is suppose to be used for creating automated Batching) to run. The usual languages used there were JScript (Microsoft's adaption of Javascript that was only supported by Internet Explorer), VBScript (A script language that was used both in Batch scripting and Scripting websites for Internet Explorer). In general anything that could exploit Internet Explorer was used. The main reason for this is the Explorer module was integrated into the Windows operating system. It's module was proportionally used in Outlook/Express.

Most of the Viruses were actually very simple in construction and would attempt to "download" compiled executables from rogue locations on the internet which would then either be hooked into how your programs ran or would actually take the place or real executables.

The easiest security fix was to actually remove the Windows Script Hosting, as it was an addon that was automatically installed from the windows disc for the earlier windows versions.

In recent years there have been many patches to software and of course total rewrites to deal with those initial problems, Scripts can't be run from inside Outlook anymore, double extensioning was made more difficult (i.e. fanpic.png.exe or fanpic.gif.vbs ) both of these would of shown fanpic.png or fanpic.gif to the user, but would actually be a script or exectuable, file attachments don't automatically get executed by their .ico these are just a number of the changes to deal with the rampant virus threat. You have to note it wasn't just because "viruses exist" and happen to hit Microsoft products, these viruses were created purely to "undermine Microsoft products".

The reason for these attacks aren't a single reason, perhaps it was individuals profiteering over their Computer Consultancy to remove infections they created, perhaps it was some scriptkiddies that for years had been indoctrinate through their hacking tutorials to hate the corporate fascist beast known as Microsoft, perhaps it was just someone that wanted to mess up some system.

 

Many of the infections seen today are "smitfraud" type of infections, with all their little fake virus scanners. Most regular virus protections can't get rid of these.

My absolute favorite programs to get rid of these are simple freeware programs called "combofix", and secondly "smitfraudfix". They don't actively protect you, but once you have been infected, they are simple way to get rid of the infection, and undo all the admin. rights disabliling.