Am I SECURE Enough ?

It will be free. Announced already some time ago.

I would say firefox is immune to all Activex installed spyware, unless you install the plugin for activex. XPI, JAVA etc is another matter.

I'm thinking more about local installation of "freeware" (which might actually be spyware).

Any upper-intermediate user should have no problems using MSAS as an on-demand scanner.

I don't get your logic here. If your logic holds, wouldnt you argue that you need no antivirus at all? Besides there are many other vectors of infection other than merely by user installation.

AVG is known to be pretty weak in detection rates, though I agree, that if you dont download and install new programs often it helps a lot.

Well I don't really need to convince another guy who considers himself upper-intermediate, what you choose to use is what to you.

From what I have seen from your setup , it built around more behaviour based software monitoring and prevention (PrevX, limited account, Abtrusion Protector) rather than via signatures anyway.

That shifts the burden to the user side though I'm sure you can handle it.

 

Yes, indeed I can handle it.

At least I'm safer then people who only run a firewall, AV and AS which is the bare minimum entry into security. Thanks to everyone in this thread who took the time to answer my posts. I have now learnt a great deal about security. As for my security setup, it all works for me and that is what is best.

 

You're right, squash, that you do have a good setup and spyware should be the least of your worries. However, I think you may be overestimating current anti-spyware scanners. Here's an article that you might take a look at:
http://windowssecrets.com/050127/#story1

You might also throw in the eScan antivirus toolkit, even if you don't use it much. There's no install, so no worries about compatiblity issues, and if you throw it in c:\Bases (or any drive letter, for that matter) then you can use kavupd.exe to update it. It uses the Kaspersky extended bases, so it has a pretty wide range of detection. Although I don't think it's a replacement for any/all other scanners, it's just a good way to fill in a lot of gaps, IMO. It kind of allows you to have the best of all worlds

 

Nice link Notok!!

yes the escan toolkit is a nice supplement for on demand scanning

 

Notok, go to the results page for that spyware test... http://spywarewarrior.com/asw-test-guide.htm then scroll to the bottom, if you comapare Ad-aware, Spybot and GIANT (Now Microsoft) AntiSpyware, they detected the same and also missed the same things! I don't know how a second spyware can help me in that case, as they are all redundant. The study is shocking, and I initially reading that I wanted to add another spyware scanner, but after reading the results page... you get the idea

I am happy at my current setup, I don't need more apps... Especially since I can't fit any more apps as backups of installers on my flash 128MB USB drive (I already imaged the hard drive, but I also like to keep the installers).

Belarc Software summary of installed security programs (Edited by me):

Computer Profile Summary
Computer Name: <Removed>
Profile Date: Monday, 28 March 2005 7:36:34 AM
Advisor Version: 6.1f
Windows Logon: <Removed>

Software Versions:
Abtrusion Protector Version 1.1.0.103 *
CCleaner Version 1.17.0094 *
DiamondCS Autostart Viewer Version 1.00.0001 *
Eraser Version 5.7 *
ewido security suite Version 3, 0, 0, 101 *
GRISOFT, s.r.o. - AVG 7.0 Anti-Virus System Version 7.1.0.285 *
Kerio Personal Firewall 4 Version 4.1.2 *
Lavasoft Ad-Aware SE VI.Second Edition *
Mozilla - Firefox Version 1.7.6: 2005022518 *
MRU-Blaster v1.5 Version 1.05.0009 *
Prevx Home Version 2.3.0.0 *
RegSeeker *
Safe XP Version 1.0 *
Soeperman Enterprises Ltd. - HijackThis Version 1.99.0001 *
SpywareBlaster Version 3.03 *
Sysinternals Rootkitrevealer Version 1.31 *

 

Ad-Aware alone caught 47%, but Ad-Aware plus GIANT caught 69%, which is a pretty good jump IMO (those figures are based on the same test as you referenced.) I keep both around, along with SpyBot for it's autoscans and various tools, but I don't do a lot of manual scans with them as my sentiment does echo yours. I do, however, like to automate things as much as possible. I like to set a night that my system will run several scans automatically, clean temp files etc, defrag, and backup. After that I do a scan with MSAS once every month or so.. if you want more info on that, just let me know.

BitDefender is a good choice, too. I don't run it just because of the install and the memory it takes up, although I've thought about using it when I get some more memory. Look through your email client, download manager, etc, to see if you can integrate it with those programs.. will even save you from needing to do much context menu scanning.

The bottom line for me is that it's better to have some of those things on hand and not need them then the other way around. I'm not going to try to hard to convince you, I just wanted to throw those out there for you to consider. The new version of Prevx (beta due out within the next couple weeks) will have some scanning functionality as well, apparently, which has kept me from checking out any other scanners until I have a better idea of what it's going to be like.

 

Agreed, and that will be nice if Prevx does so...

Cheers

 

Very interesting thread... I've learned a lot.

Security here:

1) User awareness
2) Don't use IE or OE
3) WordViewer for *.doc attachments
3) Firewall - Kerio 2.1.5
4) Deep Freeze

Thank you,

Rmus

 

Hi Rmus, welcome to Wilders.

You may want to take a look HERE. As well there are discussions HERE and even more HERE.

Hope this helps...

Let us know how you go.

Cheers

 

Wow - I can't believe people use all of that stuff. Having to worry about running those programs and keeping them updated would take all of the fun out of computing.

Thank you,

Rmus

 

So, have you tried the exploit tests HERE?

Cheers

 

I am NOT trying this _ever_ again...

I had my security setup right, until I installed bitdefender (for on-demand AV) and microsoft antispyware (for second AS) then windows xp crashed, not just crash but came up with a Blue screen of Death and dumped the memory into the physical disk even after multiple restarts, it stills killed windows xp. I restored to an earlier time using system restore, still problem persists. Luckily I had imaged this hard drive 1 or 2 days ago and I had my original working computer in only 20 minutes.

Thats what I get for trying to make a secure computer, even if the computer didn't die I would have uninstalled bitdefender and microsoft antispyware anyway.

Bitdefender = Updates do not work, I updated and it keeps on failing
Microsoft AntiSpyware = Promising, but it's still beta... and may be the cause of the problem

 

No.

Thank you,

Rmus

 

Update to my setup:

Replace Abtrusion Protector with Process Guard. Because AP is redundant with Prevx Home and slows down this machine considerably.

Thinking or/will replace Lavasoft Ad-aware with Microsoft Antispyware because the later detects more things.

 

Combine both and the detection rates go higher still

Cheers

 

I switched from Kerio to ZA
From Ad-aware to MSAS
and removed Abtrusion because redundant with Prevx and PG.

It works for me...

 

Hello, this is not exactly a security tool, but I found ERUNT to be a lot more reliable than System Restore. ERUNT is mainly registry-backup, I can't say I know greatly what System Restore actually takes a snapshot of (I am assuming it is registry hives and possibly system critical files). I have never had a problem with restoration but System Restore has failed roughly 4/5 times for me, I have also found it can be quite a space-consumer. There is a section in the manual about problems with boot-up and restore. IIRC, it mentions using the Recovery Console to restore one of the backups and makes this process easier by storing snapshots in the %SYSTEMROOT% location. As for drive imaging software, I can honestly say I have not encountered any reasonable freeware alternatives, the one I did find (DrvImagerXP) had bad compression value which made a 40GB drive stored at around 0.8:1 ratio.

Hope this helps.

You can check out ERUNT here:
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/