AppDefend v1.000 Public Beta

Excellent piece of software, complete control of my system in one
BTW, is password protection going to be available

 

That's true. Though TDS backed out of the competition. Making the whole point moot.

Well, that's very true. "PG like features" are getting pretty common, even in antiviruses and firewalls. Not to mention the standalones like online Armor.

Still you must admit, Appdefend does compete with PG headon, with pretty much (say 90-95%) the same feature set. Looking at the list of the top 5 reasons you wrote why to get Appdefend over PG, I don't see any real big changes, just improvements like SHA256 hashing, better interface, speedups and the controlling network access.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure "under the hood" it's a lot of work, but essentially PG and appdefend can be compared directly far more so than with say another product like Online Armor, Prev1, not to mention firewall or antiviruses with PG like features which are even less similar.

I would guess, your experience working on PG made doing Appdefend a lot easier. I'm surprised Diamond CS didn't have some kind of clause restricting you from competiting with them in this area when you left them at least for say x years.

I suppose it would be similar to someone working in an antivirus company, leaving to start his own.

Not that I'm complaining mind you, I like competition I'm sure Diamond CS will feel the pressure to improve PG in light of the competition with Appdefend.

 

The arrival of AppDefend is very good for the "Security Scene" but probably not good for Diamond CS. Since Jason left Diamond CS they have dumped their Anti Trojan Product and seemed to have concentrated very much on tweaking improvements to Process Guard which was and maybe still is a World Beating Product. Along comes AppDefend and it looks to already have the potential to eclipse PG, but a fairer comparison can be made when both come out of Beta. At the very least AppDefend is a serious threat to a major revenue stream for Diamond CS.
Many PG users may stay with that product since upgrading is free, this however does not generate future revenue for Diamond CS, to obtain future revenue they will have to compete with AppDefend in a market where the potential buyer is likely to have more security knowledge than the average Joe and is therfore likely to be very intelligent with the judgements they make before purchasing.
So which one wins between these two fabulous products - my gut feeling is that AppDefend will in the future come out on top, and that Jason has raised the bar with his product.. I guess time will tell, and maybe we will have to wait say 6-12 months for AppDefend 2.0 Versus ProcessGuard 4.0

 

Forgive me if i have missed this, but:

What is "Ghost security suite".

A. AppDefend + RegDefend?
B. Does AppDefend include RegDefend or will i have to buy licenses for both.
C. Will there be added other options in this suite, before it's "finished" ?

 

Hi Don, They are two defferent products within the GS Suite both require separate licences ATM.
Jason has said that the AppDefend beta still has features to be added

HTH

 

Why should learning mode not be useful anymore? Go install cygwin on your machine and see if you don't want learning mode Even gimp with its umpteen modules is a pain to install/upgrade with PG.
IMHO, a way to say "ok I trust this app (ie. the exe and its children), don't ask me zillion times for god sake" would be very welcome. In the same vein, "ok I modified this app voluntarily, don't ask me again for the next 5min" would be nice.
Will add this to wishlist....

-RE

 

Hi Pilli & thank you. So $60 or more when finished?, hmm.....but maybe there will be a discount if you buy the full suite when finished? It does seem like a nice suite IMO.

 

Hi Don,

With the 15% discount currently on offer for both products (if you sign up as a member at www.ghostsecurity.com), you can get the GSS:

Single licence (Unlimited home PC's) for US$67.90
Single licence (Single home PC) for US$49.90

Since these discounts may be reduced in the (near) future, you may want to buy them now since they both come with unlimited lifetime upgrades, and Jason does seem rather good at updating/improving his products.

 

Hi Tony,

Yes password protection will be added very soon (private beta testers have been wanting this for a long time too ).

 

Thanks Defenestration, i completely missed that.

 

OMG what an amazing piece of software this is, Jason!

Excellent work!

One question; Why must I install Ghost Security Suite for using appdefend? In the future, will you make it a stand-alone product like PG?

I don't use RegDefend and I don't really need Ghost Security Suite because all I want to use is AppDefend instead of PG.

Does this make sense?

 

Hi Suave, it does make sense which is why you can "DISABLE" RegDefend and never have to worry about it.

The amount of resources used having both components is very minimal over one or the other. However since most of my customers will use both it doesn't make sense to split it up into 2 separate processes and save a few kilobytes of disk space for people who will use only one. Hope that makes sense.

 

Jason that's interesting news. So for those of us currently want only and have regdefend, eventaully, we have to update to a version that has appdefend built in?

 

I would prefer to have separated programs to use only what I want...

If I would like to use both, in this way the Ghost Security Suite makes sense...

 

Hi xmen,

Yes all future components will be bundled together, with the user selecting which components will be active from the kernel layer. When you disable AppDefend for instance, it is effectively the same as not having it there in the first place.

Even though it may be "grayed" and in the GUI, the extra few kilobytes it adds to your memory usage and disk usage is minimal.

 

I don't know, I'd rather purchase this program as a seperate application, just like GhostWall.

I like things very simple, and since I don't use regdefend, I dont want to be bothered with the whole Ghost Security Suite thing and looking at all those extra things/features/options that I don't need.

I must admit though, the Ghost Security Suite is great for people that use all your apps simultaneously. But for people like me, I guess I'd rather just have a simple little stand-alone application called AppDefend running in my system tray to replace PG and supplement GhostWall.

I really really really don't want to have to use the whole ghost security suite just for AppDefend. It's not a matter of saving space/memory... it's just the fact that I have things there that I don't need that irks me

 

I have to agree with that 100%..

And another thing that I think has to go is the whole nag screen concept. I don't think you're going to really "nag" anyone into buying your software. In fact, typically, whenever I see something like that, I immediately dump the software, even if it's good. I just don't like seeing that stuff in an app. I think it cheapens the product. A simple 30 day trial is enough, just have it stop working after 30 days, or 15 or whatever you like. Nagging is useless..

 

I suspect the reason for this setup is to minimise the hooking needed of the Windows kernel. With just one overall security program (albeit with multiple components), only one set of hooks is needed reducing the likelihood of conflicts.

This brings up an idea for the next component - HookDefend! Protect existing security applications from being de-hooked by malware or utilities like SDTRestore! See which applications are intercepting Windows functions and be able to check for previously installed rootkits! (with eyepatch included for all budding pirates ... Yar!).

PS. I know Physical Memory access control can block hooking, but there are enough applications out there that seem to need PhysMem access (games, Java, etc) to make specific hook monitoring useful.

 

Yes it would make things simpler for jason too I expect rather than juggling several seperate programs ,different versions etc. But it's not very elegent for people who don't want the full set. Or perhaps people are afraid their resistance will be worn down, day after day of looking at the incomplete set.

Hookdefend should be able to protect itself from being dehooked no?

 

Hi [suave],

If you take a look at the "whole Ghost Security Suite" as it is now, it is barely over 1MB for the installer. Ghost Security Suite is "a simple little stand alone application" which allows you to see alerts from multiple components. Functionally there is no difference if the RegDefend component was there or not. Infact if the window title said "AppDefend" instead of "Ghost Security Suite" and there wasnt a little picture of "RegDefend" on the main tab, I'd suspect I wouldn't be hearing a complaint from you?

Until there is some real substance behind why you want it into a separate process, there isn't much I can do to help you with it.

 

Hi Kerodo,

If only there was some registry setting which I could lookup on the system to solve this problem :-

Won't_buy_shareware_if_a_nag_screen_appears

Then people like you could set that to "1" and no shareware would ever nag you again.

In all seriousness however, nag screens are proven to help people purchase software. Before I had George the Ghost on the machine, there wasn't even one message/nag when your TRIAL version turned into the FREE version. This means legitimate users might not have known it expired and thought it was free forever. In the final version the nag screen will only appear 2-3 times a month at maximum, in this build it appears every time you start the program.

The reason why I chose to do "George the Ghost" is to lessen the impact of nagging the user by hopefully lightening up the situation with a little comedy. Looking at it from a purely technical perspective I can understand how it could "cheapen" the product. I don't take myself so seriously however that I am unable to poke fun at myself.

 

Ah, but would RegDefend alert on this?

 

Jason, it looks sloppy, that's all. It makes me feel like it is installing all these extra things that I dont want.

Look, if I pay for AppDefend, I'd like it to be its own stand-alone program. Infact, I think all your software should be stand-alone. Maybe you can have the ghost security suite be optional for people who use more than 1 of your software? This way you can make both sides happy.

Anyways, I am using the trial now, and it just bothers me to see the whole RD and GSS there. I feel like there is extra things there that I don't want and also like the AppDefend software that I will purchase in the future is not complete because of all these extra things in there that are disabled and serving absolutely no purpose other than a decoration...

At first I thought I was crazy when I posted this the first time. But now I know that I am not because I see other people here are agreeing with me.

What we want is what we pay for. That's all.

I know it is exactly the same thing to have GSS with AD as a component or just plain AD as a stand-alone application, but it's just annoying looking at all those extra stuff that came bundled with the software I bought that serves me no purpose. It makes me feel like it is incomplete, and it just bothers me.

I don't know if I am explaining this right. And please don't take this the wrong way either. Your work is amazing and I hope you keep up the excellent work and surprise us with more excellence in the future.

And btw, I am not complaining. It is just a matter of preference. The software itself is a wonderful little piece of work. Maybe you can think about making GSS an optional thing for those who want it.

 

Pete, I wouldn't touch KAV with a 10 foot pole. I tried NOD32 and even that was too much for me. I use f-prot now wich takes up about 1,500k in memory in only 1 process and I am starting to hate that too and I have no idea why.

Im real picky with the things I install and hate things that are too big and I really don't like all-in-one security type apps. I love Jasons work so that's why I make my comments. All the other products can go to hell.