AV Suggestion for a House Full Of Kids

Alright my father in law recently had an infection from clicking on an email that came from his friend. His friend later found out that he was part of a bot net. Needless to say he reinstalled Windows 7 on all of his 6 computers. Im in charge of configuring this place.

The way he has everything setup is that the main computer basically acts like a server. It is the go between for the USB HD's, wireless printer, wireless router, etc.

Im thinking that Ill implement ClearCloud DNS through his Linksys E3000 router.

He currently runs MBAM for all of his machines. He has VIPRE AV on his main "Server", but its only a trial. I had won a 1 year license that I gave to him and its expired so Im looking for suggestions. All of his machines are Win 7 or XP flavor and x86 OS.

 

id say Avast with Password Protection. or MSE Even Panda Cloud AV works well.

you can go wrong with those.. i didnt go into detail because this cant be a A vs B

 

With kids some sort of "containment" (virtualization, sandboxing) is much more important than an AV. Without "containment", something will eventually get through.

For a free AV: AVIRA, AVAST, or MSE.

 

The kids arent young. The youngest is 16. Im thinking PrevX SOL with Avast Free on all of them and MBAM for on demand scans when he sees fit.

 

use sandboxie free, and just place the Sandboxied explorer on the desktop that will work almost 100% of the time.

and if you dont mind spending money use APPGuard. works very well with low over head.

 

Guess I should have clarified. Free is the goal here. Work is shoddy around his area and he doesnt have much to spare.

 

It would be a good idea to make an Image of the System Partition of each PC. I have heard that Macrium Reflect Free would be a good choice for the Imaging.

 

The last thing you want in a house full of kids is any form of popups. So things like hips/etc are a no go. You'd also want to avoid any AV with a high FP rate due to these popups, so I'd avoid Avira or Panda as recommended above.

You've already made a very good wall around the PC's by choosing a DNS provider for malware protection, so AV shouldn't be as important. Any cheap one with respectable detection rates will do.

I'd also recommend you lock down the PC as much as possible. I'm going to assume it's Home Edition so Policies is probably out of the question. I suggest the use of Limited accounts - the kids should have to ask to install anything. Also downloading EMET and adding some of their commonly used online programs, whilst making sure SEHOP is on.

 

Real-time AV: Avast Free + Prevx SOL
Virtualizations: Returnil Free
Internet: Chrome/Firefox + Norton DNS

 

It is also recommended to use Firefox with Adblock Plus. Subscribe to Adblock Plus "EasyList". This will block many of the adds, some of which could be Malicious.

 

avast! Free Antivirus, mostly because you can lock it with password. Just to be sure kids won't disable it themself.

 

What was his security setup when he initially was infected?

 

The key here is the server.

It must be kid proof and father in law proof. THEY must be blocked 100% from accessing it's settings and security software.

The server itself is behind a secured router and as well must be between all other PC's on the LAN and it would have all the security on it. The LAN pc's attach to it to access the www. Given that the 6 or so pc need no security software.
Backup images of course.

The best guy IMHO here on this network stuff is STEM but I'm not sure if he is active in this forum on AV's

 

The key here is to use software that requires no user interaction, when the user has to make a choice on what to do then your in trouble, this unfortunately eliminates any type of HIPS etc. I set all my clients up the same way, the KISS philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid) saves a lot of headaches.

1. Use MSE for their antivirus, block limited users from viewing history and schedule full weekly scans.

2. Use Norton DNS.

3. Use Google Chrome with a few choice extensions 1. Ad Block Plus with the easylist+privacy filter and the MalwareDomians filter 2. WOT 3. Chromeblock 4. Kidsafe (if the kids are younger).

4. Use Windows Live Family Safety, tailor it to your needs, this works great especially with Windows 7.

5. Make all users but yourself limited accounts.

6. Have SUPERAntiSpyware and MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware installed for manual scans when needed.

7. Use CCleaner regularly, set to run at startup.

These are all basic, simple and free things to do that will eliminate the majority of problems, there are many other things you can do as well but these few will make your life much easier. Just using Google Chrome with it's sandbox technology will stop drive by downloads that are inevitable with IE.

 

IE9 now scans downloads for virus and other malware. works pretty good.

but thats in RC right now

 

have you thought of hiding the mains lead?foolproof lol(unless they have a spare!)

 

Simple

EMET, MSE and free Sandboxie for browser.
Avira free for XP

 

Appguard on main and Defensewall on the rest. As mentioned above use an anti-malware dns service through your router.

 

I'd use a virtualization approach if their Internet behavior is dubious. Returnil has a free software for that. If you're willing to invest money I'd suggest ShadowDefender... but since you're asking for an AV suggestion; I simply have none because I'm rather biased on that part.

 

Great list of tools for the OP's SERVER!

 

Easy, A Mac with Intego VirusBarrier X6 and Firefox and these add-ons-- Better Privacy, Ghostery, AdBlock Plus and NoScripts with allow global scripting because it still has some protection with global scripting allowed. Run OpenDNS's FREE family shield DNS service.

208.67.222.123
208.67.220.123

.

 

+1
Nice and easy but most importantly free.

 

Looks like pretty much everything is mentioned already, except for educating the "kids".

 

Clear Cloud DNS is a great idea..

I personally would install Avira free on all the computers with heuristics set to high. Also install Firefox if not already with adblock plus. Have Malwarebytes installed for on demand scanning. Sandboxie as suggested may be a good idea as well on the kids computers. But that can become a bit of a headache if they want to save bookmarks or browsing history. That takes some tweaking. You could even implement something like Returnil so the computer would be restored to perfect working order after each restart. But again that comes with the inconvenience that any changes made to the C: drive will be gone at reboot. But Returnil almost guarantees a virus free environment. To me a more simple solution is use Comodo firewall with sandbox enabled.(dont install the AV just the firewall) That way if they execute some fake AV etc it will run in the sandbox and not affect the system. If they need to be able to install programs on the computer .Most programs should install without any alerts from the sandbox If you have these settings:
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/858/defset5png.png

More secure settings would be unchecking Automatically detect installers and automatically trust files from trusted installers. I would only do this though if they don't need to install programs or if they could have you install programs when they need to. Because everything they try to install will prompt them.

These are just some ideas. I believe you should use some kind of virtualization on the kids computers. Personally I would use Comodo. Because with it they will still have bookmarks, history etc. The only issue they might have is installing programs. Comodo sandbox is very strong even with allowing trusted installers.

EDIT: Also I would recommend enabling parental control so they will not be able to override something that is sandboxed: http://help.comodo.com/topic-72-1-170-1700-Parental-Control-Settings.html

 

I suggest a Prevention/restriction approach. These would combat unknown software from running wild on the computer in the first place.

Pick one of these three:
SRP (LUA)
Faronics Anti-Executable (LUA)
AppGuard (LUA)
"Notice I put Limited User Accounts after each option."

If you really think a AV is necessary there are a lot of free ones available.