Securing Vista - recommendations?

Just asking about how to help secure Vista and what is a decent security set up for Vista.

I was considering going with the PCTools firewall, Winpatrol free version, probably Malwarebytes or SuperAS for ondemand scans and Avira for my AV. I'll probably add Xp-antispy to my line up as well.

Anything I'm missing that you would recommend?

Any other recommendations to help secure this OS would be very welcome also.

Thanks very much.

 

Really depends on your internet connection.
If you are behind a router/NAT with SPI firewall then a software firewall isn't really required.

A decent HIPS package should suffice, Online Armor & Comodo spring readily to mind.
OA has option of enabling/disabling firewall if you ever take laptop on the road.

As for AV, Avira seems to lead the way detection/speed wise but Avast is a good option, for free, as it includes an Anti-Spyware module also.

All this for free!!

 

Thanks for the recommends Smiggy. I do like freeware best, I should have said that in the beginning.

But some other areas I was wondering about are system hardening and any necessary tweaks in the OS itself that would lead to greater security.

Do we still need tools like Windows Worms Doors Cleaner and other similar apps or is Vista more immune to these things so they aren't really needed?

I did go to Folder Options and selected to show hidden files and folders. These are the kind of OS tweaks I was wondering about.

 

You might be entering the world of overkill here.
What was listed above will more than secure your system given that you maintain safe browsing practices, however that said you can always add a further layer of protection in SandBoxIE, again free.

This creates a virtual environment for browsing, any infections, trojans, malware etc. 'obtained' through browsing stay in the virtual environment.
When you close your 'sandboxed' browser everything accrued gets flushed 'down the pan' without making it into your system!

Another tip, don't use email clients to download emails to your PC, Thunderbird, Outlook Express (does anyone use this anymore?), this is just asking for attack/infection, use webmail, Gmail, Hotmail (if you can stand the ads), YahooMail etc.
The receive them, back them up, virus check and more importantly, store them, for you!
If you read your emails in the sandbox then any attachments that prove 'bad' ain't gonna hurt yah either!

 

@ Smiggy

No, not overkill, but old school. I prefer to lockdown the OS first. This seems to be an often overlooked technique these days. It can also free up resources and make your system run snappier. Something that can't be said of those who run too many security apps.

I want to take a more streamlined approach to securing this OS and use just a few low resource apps along with security tweaks. That's the approach I'm looking into right now.

I'm not exactly a security n00b here, but am not claiming expert staus either, but still new to Vista and I thought some here might be willing to share some of there Vista lockdown and security tips.

Anyway, I did do some looking around myself and found some interesting tips on the net. Here's just a very few I found, if anyone is interested. http://www.tweakvista.com/VistaSecurityTweaks.aspx But I'm still open to suggestions on other tweaks, if anyone cares to share.

Outside of the tweaks, one program I found that's specifically for Vista looks to be a hardening/privacy tool of sorts (most hardening tools seem to be for 2K/XP only). I have yet to try it though and thought someone else here may have done so and could comment on it.

Vispa as it's called, is available at MajorGeeks, Download.com and Softpedia and gets the 100% malware clean certification.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Vispa_d5986.html

http://www.download.com/Vispa/3000-2094_4-10701495.html?cdlPid=10866860

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/System-Tweak/Vispa.shtml

Authors homepage:

http://vispa.whyeye.org/

The author of Vispa does say some anti-malware can detect Vispa as malware so I did upload it to VT and here's the results.

http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/3b8d145995c0ad43e810892a79c6993b

Doesn't look so good after those results. But I figured based on the way it works and along with the Softpedia 100% clean pledge, I figure it may be safe. Any comments from others on this app?

 

Just go for comodo Internet security, and add malware-bytes free and drweb cureit as your free 2nd opinions.