Coming down the homestretch :)

Well...I have experimented, read and reread and have finally narrowed my decision about a new antivirus/anti-trojan/firewall down a bit. Here are my following options concerning my home "security" system for a XP SP2 machine with 512mb ram and a AMD 1800 cpu. Internet via Roadrunner cable.

First, I am now running behind a D-Link DI 624 Router/Firewall/WAN box. I also have licensed versions of A-Squared, BoClean (don't like BoClean as much anymore due to the CPU spikes every few seconds) and Ad-Aware SE Plus with their Ad-Watch/Process Watch Monitor. The following are in no particular order.

Choice 1: F-Secure Internet Security Suite and A-Squared along with my Ad-Aware SE Plus. I can get this 50% off as a Microsoft user.

Choice 2: NOD32 along with A-Squared along with my Ad-Aware SE Plus and a free version of Netveda, Sygate or Zone Alarm.

Choice 3: AVK2005 along with A-Squared along with my Ad-Aware SE Plus and a free version of Netveda, Sygate or Zone Alarm. (By the way, does anyone know which engine AVK uses for its resident/memory scanner? Kaspersky, BitDefender or both?

Choice 4: Dr. Web along with A-Squared along with my Ad-Aware SE Plus and a free version of Netveda, Sygate or Zone Alarm.

These 4 choices appear to be fairly comprehensive in their scope. I have also been running a trial version of Safe and Secure with the Bitdefender on demand scanner AV...I'm not sure if it is better than A-Squared or not, or if they complement each other (or are redundant to have both).

One of my other thoughts is to run NOD32, A-Squared, SafenSec (with on demand Bitdefender), Ad-Aware SE Plus and just buy a copy of Look N Stop....and be DONE with this whole decision making mess

Thanks for your help on yet another "HELP ME" thread

 

Hi Samjax, you might like to take a look at a few setups here. As well there are discussions on security software here and even more here.

Hope this helps...

Let us know how you go.

Cheers

 

Go Dr.Web + Safe'n'Sec, all you need. Dr. Web is great, but add in on-demand prowess of BitDefender, and the awesome backend protection of SNS, and you have a pretty bulletproof security rig.

This is my choice for 4 PC's at home, and 11 at my office.. All run the same configuration. Zero issues, light as all getout on the computers.

 

Hi Samjax,

Of the choices that you have provided, I would go with:

2) NOD32, A-squared, ZoneAlarm.

From my experiences, I think this would give you very good protection. I would highly recommend RegDefend instead of Ad-watch SE Plus but since you are already a licensed user of Ad-watch, I can understand why you might not want to purchase RegDefend until you are comfortable that you really need it.

Together with this configuration, I would recommend downloading Ewido free for backup-up on-demand scanning, and using the BitDefender Online scan (nowadays it is my favorite online scan) from time to time. Also, you might want to load BOClean now and then for some quick updates and scanning.

Rich

 

There is such a thing as being too paranoid, and overkill.

Some people I think are way overly obsessive about this stuff. But then again, the security software vendors love it, it feeds sales. ;-)

 

After reading some of the posts in these forums, it would make you worry about being connected to the internet. The forums are mostly populated by a small group of paranoid people. I don't think the risk is that high for the average user who does not go to Warez and other file swapping sites which are certainly a higher risk. For the average user, a good AV and a firewall will give sufficient protection. The group of users that worry about Trojans, ADS and Rootkits are paranoid and nothing is going to change that. My users regularly surf the net, on all sorts of sites and we are yet to seen an infection. If we get one, and it can't be cleaned, we will simply reformat and reinstall. No big deal

Dick

 

I do think paranoia sets in when u dun know what's happening. Sometimes it's good to be ignorant about certain things.

However, after seeing programs that connect out the 'net and reset/disable itself, the pandora's box is opened. One starts to wonder what else can happen, especially when I do most of my banking and transactions on the net.

Having said that, a good disk imaging, AV, possibly AT and Firewall should suffice.

 

I'm "paranoid" because a little while ago, we were really screwed over by online-based credit card fraud. Since then, I vowed to get the know-how to hopefully prevent a catastrophe like that from ever affecting our lives again. So paranoid, I guess, but not without good reason.

 

@ Dick,

Well, I somewhat agree, but appreciate where the sentiment arises. When one is presented with a perceived threat and is somewhat unsure of what measures to take, it is very easy to go overboard. All you have to do is watch the evening news in the US in a northern city when a large snowstorm approaches - it's as though many folks are planning for an extended isolation in their homes and apartments. This situation is played out constantly in daily life when the threat is poorly understood and the consequences can be significant.

Security is similar. You have a bad experience, have a friend who has had a bad experience, or read about some of them here (which could range from a truly unfortunate infection to simple misconfiguration and/or program conflict), and you might start to lay on the protective measures.

On the other hand, the very inexperienced can get themselves into trouble quite quickly without going to or knowingly going to bad sites. Depending upon what happens, a minor issue can quickly morph into a major system compromise if not dealt with.

With the proper choice of configuration, it doesn't take an extensive assembly of programs to be very secure.

@ Samjax,

My recommendation - NOD32/BOclean/and something like SafenSec and/or the ProcessGuard/RegDefend combination. SafenSec is still a young option. I haven't found any problems myself with it and it is compatible with the programs I mentioned.

I wouldn't obsess over the periodic utilization spikes by BOClean - the question is do you see an impact on system responsiveness due to it? I personally don't and it appears to have some advantages over other options, in part due to it's somewhat unique mode of operation.

If you are worried about system utilization, the firewall - which really can be skipped in many cases if you have a decent router, which you do, has a much larger footprint on system responsiveness than either NOD32 or BOClean.

I've never run any realtime processes for adware control, relying instead on the AV/AT to handle the routines which install these nasties - which they tend to do quite well. Having a couple of the free or paid antispyware programs ready for cleanup is recommended, and I have them ready to go as well - I just don't have any antispyware realtime processes.

Blue

 

I understand what you say. I do all my private banking on the internet and the majority of our company's banking also. We do watch the two computers closely that are used for banking transactions but to date the combination of a good AV and Firewall have served us well. We do have TDS-3 which has never to date found anything.

Dick

 

Hello Samjax

I'd suggest Choice 2 or 3 for you. I would normally have suggested choice 2, but since I know that GDATA AVK will also have BitDefender's upcoming advanced heuristics engine, it would make a better deal to go for it - if your PC is fairly recent - I chose not to have GDATA AVK because I felt the renewal price was a bit steep, at 29.95 Euro (One full license costs 34.95 Euro I think)

Besides, I got NOD32 quite cheap because I am a student, so I decided to take NOD32

You might as well add MS AntiSpyware to your list of security apps. It is a good protector

 

The resident scanner, on-demand scanner, and email scanner can each be set up to use kav, bd, or both, as you prefer.

 

I think it boils down to the "State of Fear" in the USA, and how the media and politicians control people by keeping them afraid.

Honestly, on normal machines I use a good AV + Hardware Firewall and browse with Firefox, and have yet to see any infections. These guys that have 14 security apps on their PC's chunking down CPU and RAM, and then post it in their signatures crack me up to no end.

 

I personally have NOD32+Firefox+Software Firewall realtime. I run Spybot sometimes and Ad-Aware Free rarely, and they find nothing but a bunch of tracking cookies.

 

I never had tracking cookies... Just use SpyBlaster (it's not running real time so don't worry) just update it and run it once in a while to immunize your system

 

Alright, Thanks

 

Cleaning up yet another 2 machines yesterday, I think these customer will disagree with you. The first customer is about 60yrs old and doesn't 4x4 across the internet, he had a number of viruses and a small amount of spyware, he wasn't aware of the need for anything other than an anti-virus program. His system is now clean and he has what I call basic security.

The second customer’s machine is actually his teenage daughters, her P4 3.0Ghz had crawled to a snails pace, they had formatted the system and reloaded AV and some Anti-spyware programs, within a week it had begun to slow again. Hence it was brought to us, she had obviously turned off her AV, she had coolWWWsearch, multiple toolbars and you name it in spyware... She is not about to learn, he doesn't want to continually pay for her wandering anywhere and everywhere, and installing anything that passes her way, so now they have what I call tight security. He is password protecting Nod32 and Process Guard 3, and that should be the end of it.

Cheers

 

Same here for years just had Norton AV and I thought that was enough was I wrong!! Now look at what I Have The Layered Approach!! And it works!!

Cheers

 

Ditto. I am always cleaning up machines for friends who only had a single good AV on their machine. Last week it took me over 8 hours to clean a pretty dirty machine which my friend thought was clean, until it became almost unusable. Then I ran KAV and a bunch of other anti-malware products and I found plenty of nasties, including two that were causing the real problems.

If you "think" you are clean, you may be wrong, and it may be sometime before you discover your mistakes. At a minimum, I recommend running the KAV or BitDefender online scanner on a fairly regular basis. But if you use your machine for financial work, or to store other private data, then I would recommend a more secured layered appaoch.

For those that are barely protected, it probably is highly advisable to have a least an image copy for a reasonably fast recovery in case the system becomes unusable. It only takes one bad experience to recover the costs of a good, layered security system.

Rich

 

Instead of KAV or BitDefender, will McAfee do? My bro has McAfee , and he scans my OS occasionally, which is protected by NOD32. Same way, I scan his OS occasionally, which of course is protected by McAfee.

McAfee found a downloader on my OS and NOD found a JavaScript virus on his OS