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windows security - what's really necessary?

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nosh:
I don't see any harm in having a mix of security apps on your system, especially if you are paranoid by nature *raises hand* and doing so makes you comfortable.

The pitfalls?
1) The cost involved. There are lots of good freeware applications out there - anti-spyware, AV, firewalls.
2) And I think this is far more significant - the hit your system takes by running these apps - a smart choice of applications would definitely help. I have two AV apps, two anti-spyware apps, two rootkit scanners and a firewall sitting on my system. Sounds bad, but all of these have realtime monitoring disabled other than the firewall and one AV which only scans incoming mail and online activity. Total hit on resources - close to zero. I see absolutely no point in scanning the same old files a bazillion times. If I download something I suspect may be fishy the AV gets to scan it. The anti-spyware & anti-rootkit apps  are used _once_ in two months, just before I backup my system.

I could probably disable everything and still sit easy, thanks to drive imaging, which is the real hero here. But I don't see the point considering the only "real" hit is a few MB of disk space.''

Regarding outbound protection, I would hate not knowing some slimy app trying to call home. Besides, I'm a miser when it comes to my bandwidth, which is limited - I don't see why I should let any app send crashdumps, etc home unless I really want it to. Allowing malicious apps on your system is a grey area coz, a good example is an app written about recently on DC  by a well-intentioned person, hosted at a respectable site which tried to connect to a totally different domain known best for ripoff apps. What harm could it have done to let it connect, probably none. But I feel much better knowing about stuff like that. It's purely subjective, but in the end, that's what matters.

Carol Haynes:
I have moved out of the paranoid camp and into the light (and a computer that actually works quickly).

My security setup is:

AccessPoint/Router Firewall

On my PCs I have:

NOD32 v.3 (no probs even with NirSoft utils - I just excluded those folders)
WindowsXP Firewall

PCTools Spyware Doctor

The last of those is installed but I don't have it running in the background - I just fire it up periodically and give my system a checkup.

So far no probs (famous last words)

Mark0:
Me too.
I remember the times of the firsts release of Kerio Firewall (while it was actually an interesting piece of software), with hours passed at experimenting with various rules to block this, make that working, and so on! :)

Now I relay on the NAT Router/firewall combo, a free AV (that haven't really detected a threat in... well... never!), and Firefox (or any browser that don't use the IE engine). If I have to go on the move with a laptop, the integrated software firewall to just close some doors will be OK. Add the occasional scan with some antispyware tool (but not something resident, thanks).

Other than that, I find that a lot of security tools end up causing more problems / issues than they supposedly solve.

Looking back, seeing at how the personal software firewall market evolved from about inexistent some years ago, to everyone-and-his-dog-build-a-personal-firewall of today, I can't help but thining that probably Steve Gibson had some part in spreading the "hysteria".
A big IMHO, obviously.

Bye!

Tekzel:
What is necessary is entirely dependent on the people that will use the system.  At home I don't use any form of anti-spyware, anti-virus, or firewall.  I have my Linksys router configured to be relatively secure but other than that, thats all I need.  99.9% of the rest of the population needs some form of protection though, as they don't know how to not get infected like I do.  The thing to understand is there is not a single piece of software, or any combination of software, that can keep a sufficiently determined user from getting infected.  The most important part of the equation is education of the person at the keyboard.  Then, for most people, a reasonable level of protection will suffice.  But, ultimately, the most important thing is the person sitting at the keyboard.

Lately, I find that the Microsoft OneCare product is nice.  Reasonably priced, reasonably effective, and here is the good part, doesn't molest the hell out of a user's PC like anything with Symantec or McAfee in the name.

Lashiec:
I'm a bit with my feet in the paranoid and logical fields. Since I don't have a router (I should have chose the Wi-Fi option instead of the cable :P), I prefer to have a bit more security that it would be normal, not that much, but a bit more.

So apart from Opera and Firefox, both running adblocking, avast! fully activated and Windows Defender in testing (I'd probably move to test Spyware Terminator next, Defender is beginning to piss me off with its zero possibilities of configuration), I have another antivirus (AntiVir, completely deactivated), and several other scanners, all free of course. I'm thinking in eliminating a few of those and leaving only the best or the ones with the most useful functions for manual analysis, since I don't like having too much software sitting in there doing nothing.

I used to have Internet Explorer protected with URLs blacklists, but since I almost never use Internet Explorer, seems SpyBot's download blocker does the same work and I don't like the prospect of having 80,000 URLs in the registry for nothing, all that is disabled right now. Besides, it seems the future is leading us to have blacklists built into the browsers and updated via Internet daily, like Firefox 3 does thanks to StopBadware and Google. Besides, those lists are far bigger than those compiled by security software makers, so that's another side covered.

I'm still thinking what to do regarding the firewall. I'm not a fan of having programs pestering me up with constant dialogs, and as I argued in the other thread, most firewalls do this. If I can find a light, quiet firewall, I'll use it, programs like Kerio or Sygate could fit in the category, but I don't have the time to put up them to test right now. If I can't find one, an antispyware with behavioral analysis will be more than enough.

Something that I'd like to see someday is a proper security test, instead of those synthetic ones. Like, for example, how well it would fare a PC with the basic Windows Firewall, an antivirus and some passive protection after navigating in dangerous sites. Or how good is a HIPS without any other protection. And other variations. That would be refreshing, and would give some real feedback over how good particular combinations of software are, and if those highly touted security apps are really so good as the virtual tests suggest. Gizmo did some of those, but more of this kind are necessary.

Finally, a good security guide. It's amazing how many free security software exists, I didn't know there was software to control the Windows Firewall in depth (a weak point of it IMO). Darwin, don't check up those lists unless you want to have app's taskbar ;D

Whee! Another long rant :D

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