Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
The Best Security Suites (2013/2014)
Innuendo:
From my standpoint, Eset has the best, most utilitarian and powerful user system, as far as user options and interface.-mouser (February 15, 2014, 06:41 PM)
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You should track down some screenshots of Agnitum's new UI. It's very modern and streamlined. Everything is minimalist until you go into the advanced settings. Then you're presented with every setting you'd wish to tweak, but it is still presented logically.
The options and alerts are excellent -- and they still have some firewall features that for some reason few have copied -- like when an alert pops up you can choose to ignore it for the current session (or once, or create a rule).
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Agnitum has that as well. You can also set various settings that make the training of the firewall easier for you on first install.
There really needs to be a distinction between truly flexible controllable firewalls like Eset, Outpost, and Comodo, which are in a different class than the others, that just silently do their job and offer you little information or control -- and little help if something is being silently blocked which shouldn't be. It does alert me when anything tries to connect in or out which I like to know.
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Outpost is the only firewall that I know of that allows you to control how granular the firewall will be and how often it will alert you. If one just wants a 'quiet' firewall like AVG, you can configure Outpost that way. However, if you are a micro-manager and you want to be alerted any time a DLL on your system has changed, a program updated, or say, a program trying to access the internet through IE then Outpost can do that, too.
HOWEVER, I have recently dumped Eset despite being a paying customer. I have confirmed that their firewall makes my computer unstable and causes programs to occasionally hang and require a reboot to terminate.
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Eset used to be the best, but their AV was always better than their firewall. One could say the exact same thing about Kaspersky as well. They used to have an unbeatable AV, but it was always better than their firewall.
For the last week I've been trialing AVG internet security. I tried a dozen others but AVG was the one that I found least offensive. I might try outpost again, as I always liked Outpost, but right now AVG is doing pretty well by me.
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It's been a long while since I last checked out AVG, but every time I have it never completely protected my system. Things were always slipping through.
Innuendo:
Also - it looks like the free version of Agnitum's suite is at 7.1.1 while the paid version is at 9.0. I don't know if the version numbers between the free suite and the paid suite necessarily correspond with each other (ie., does that mean that the free version uses the same basic technology as the 7.x version of the paid suite used?), but that's my assumption at this point unless someone corrects me.-mwb1100 (February 15, 2014, 10:02 PM)
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Yes, the version numbers do correspond. That's the trade-off. You're getting a commercial product for free, but it's an older version. Agnitum keeps making noises about updating the free version to be closer to their paid offering, but they haven't done it yet.
I don't think that's too huge of a deal, though, because a firewall isn't as dependent on updates as an AV is what with it having to rely on signatures and such.
superboyac:
A, being a fan of Small and Light, that was nice! But see the note about behavior vs signatures. What if you got that to behave with a second AV program without them fighting each other? Could the combined power of the two approaches synergistically become "more than the sum of the parts"?
-TaoPhoenix (February 15, 2014, 11:14 AM)
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Hard to say, but the AV players are aware of it. As a result, many of the big AV products (that are signature based) also include a heuristic/suspicious behavior scanning feature. Many people leave it off. And it's not necessarily turned on by default.
-40hz (February 15, 2014, 03:00 PM)
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40hz, question:
Why did you go with Bitdefender AV over MSE?
Stoic Joker:
A, being a fan of Small and Light, that was nice! But see the note about behavior vs signatures. What if you got that to behave with a second AV program without them fighting each other? Could the combined power of the two approaches synergistically become "more than the sum of the parts"?
-TaoPhoenix (February 15, 2014, 11:14 AM)
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Hard to say, but the AV players are aware of it. As a result, many of the big AV products (that are signature based) also include a heuristic/suspicious behavior scanning feature. Many people leave it off. And it's not necessarily turned on by default.
-40hz (February 15, 2014, 03:00 PM)
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40hz, question:
Why did you go with Bitdefender AV over MSE?
-superboyac (February 17, 2014, 05:35 PM)
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I'm going to guess because MS only has 2 sizes, tiny and enterprise. While MSE can (legally) be use on business networks with 10 or less machines. Above that (legally) requires MS ForeFront which is such a big harry monster that it doesn't make sense on networks with less than ~500 machines. So if you (and I suspect 40 is) are in that vast middle ground ... You need a middle sized (legal - option B ) solution to avoid getting forced into MS's A or C (dinky or huge respectively) size options.
40hz:
40hz, question:
Why did you go with Bitdefender AV over MSE?
-superboyac (February 17, 2014, 05:35 PM)
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@SB - it's very light on its feet and the free edition protects better the MSE IMO. My GF had a few niggling things get through MSE a short time ago that didn't get spotted until her weekly MBAM scan. Happened about three times. Since I put the freebie Bitdefender on her PC MBAM comes up completely clean.
I like Bitdefender. It's been around forever and earns consistent high detection scores in tests. I especially like their small business and enterprise products. They've always worked well for me in a client setting. YMMV.
Note: I've used (at one time or another) AV solutions from:
Avast
AVG
Avira
Bitdefender
CA
ESET
F-Protect
Kapersky
McAfee
Norton
Symantec
Of the above, I would still consider using Kapersky. And possibly AVG since it seems to really be at home with Windows 8 (which is coming whether we want it or not). Even has a pretty 'Win8-look' to its dashboard. The clients I have that use AVG are happy with it, even if I think it's feature set is bulking up alarmingly with each new release. (Note. AVG's customer service can sometimes be a little hard to deal with - so keep good track of your license keys and customer ID in case you do need to talk to them.)
Most of the other products I thought were great at one time. Or at least I did until they mucked them up with feature bloat. I'll also +1 w/Mouser on ESET. Their NOD32 antivirus was one of the absolute best products available - until they broke it.
I generally don't have much need for local firewall (or related features) on my home PCs. The firewall, along with antispam and privacy controls, are handled by my gateway for the entire network. So on the local machines I just run Bitdefender + the Windows built-in firewall and call it a day. I also keep a copy of the free versions of SuperAntispyware and MBAM on each machine for additional on-demand checking - and a bootable Kapersky USB key and restoration images in case some mega-disaster ever strikes.
Outside of that, keeping Windows religiously updated, and my other software regularly updated (mostly :-[ ) constitutes my Windows security regimen.
"That's the way America does it! That's the way 40hz does it! And it's worked pretty well so far..."
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UPDATE:
Note: one of my cronies just pointed me to this. It has info and links that allow you to legally obtain a fully functional "one-year trial" copy of AVG Internet Security 2014. Can't vouch for it since I didn't try to install it - but the download links on the webpage still appear (as of today 2/18/2014) to be working. A similar offer appeared on the Most i Want website recently. See it here.
AVG Internet Security 2014 Free Download with 1 Year Trial Serial Key
AVG Internet Security 2014 is normally priced at $54.99 for a 1 year 1 PC serial number/license key. And it comes with a 30 days trial version like other security software. If you don’t like the usual 30 days trial then here is an promotion offer to download a trial version of AVG Internet Security 2014 with an in-built serial key for 1 year (364 days) at no cost. It doesn’t say how long this offer will stay free, so get it while it last!
This free 1 year trial is actually intended for Huawei dongle users but it works for everyone lol. And in terms of features and protections, there are no differences between a trial and a paid license — you get all the same features, updates, and protection.
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