Some suggestions, please.

My wife is riding her broom around the house and making it known that she does not have any desire to learn about security software.
So now she wants me to set up a new pc with simple yet serious protection.
I can go with a Suite, forgive me, or with layers that blend seamlessly together.
But are any of the Suites really good at preventing leaks?
And would that same Suite also be a superior AV?
I'm thinking of Avira Suite v8. But of course there are no real test results around yet.
Or Avira Personal Premium, Threatfire and Defense Wall-if it stops leaks too- and SAS on demand.
I wouldn't put OA on her pc. It can be touchy at times in my experience.
Hope some of you can point me in the right direction.

 

If she doesn't want to learn, I would go with a suite and a rollback app (returnil, rollback rx, etc).
Also a clean image for disaster recovery.

In my experience, sandboxie properly set up is a good choice also, just tell her that she should click on "the little pizza slice" if she wants to browse the internet. Even my mother can do that, and she knows NOTHING about security.

IMO, threatfire is a great app, but anything needing the user to choose an action, WILL end wrong at one point if the user doesn't know what he/she is doing (and sometimes even if he does know).

Good luck!

 

Thinking computers haven't been invented yet, so the user will always, at some point or other, need to interact with software. Take Sandboxie; can you run your whole computer sandboxed (IE is far from the only attack vector)? Do you never download anything you think is harmless and intend to keep?

 

Are you running Vista or XP? A suite that prevents leaks is Kaspersky. Not sure about too many others. But if I was going the suite route, and wanted leak protection I would definitely go with KIS. I am sure there are other fine suites as well. KIS requires some user interaction though.

You cannot go wrong with Avira Premium IMO. Maybe that would be the route to take as well. Threatfire pops up not too often and you can normally tell what caused the pop up if you are running programs and such. If you are on XP maybe a combo of Avira Premium, Firefox with some add ons and Threatfire would be ok and just run the Windows firewall.

Otherwise just forget about leak detection and load up on the premium AV in Avira and maybe SuperAntiSpyware Pro and Windows firewall. At least your wife will not need much user interaction then. Nod32 is also a great hands off program if set to Blackspear's settings in 2.7. It takes 30 minutes or so to set it up but after that you are home free. I am running Threatfire with Nod32 and SAS Pro on my desktop with hardly ever a pop up.

 

For ease of use, I'd go with Kaspersky's suite. Configure the firewall for her, turn off web scanning, and she'll never realise it's there. I personally switched over to Avira + Comodo, but I wouldn't really recommend comodo for someone who doesn't want a lot of interaction.

 

My wife is the same. After trying all sorts of combinations for her laptop we have ended up with Avira free and GESWall behind a router. GESWall policy notifications have been swithed off.

 

If you want a suite that provides no-brainer antileak protection, go for Symantec. I've always been an admirer of how they took the concept of a smart behavior blocker and applied it to a firewall. Their AV isn't too shabby either.

ThreatFire is another program that provides good antileak protection. It's not a firewall by itself, so you need to pair it with a simple firewall if you want to control which programs can have net access and which can't. But it'll provide good defenses against malicious programs that try to use indirect ways to bypass your simple firewall. Simple standalone firewalls are unfortunately rare, as the public perception of them from Matousec's tests have resulted in vendors adding various layers of outbound protection to their products, but one product that has resisted this foolish trend and I've had good experience with is Eset Smart Security.

 

1. Separate system from data (2 partitions) + clean installation from scratch and take image backups at the right moment.
2. Use Returnil or ShadowDefender and keep it frozen.
3. Router + Firewall
4. Any security software that stops the execution of malware between two reboots : Anti-Executable, DefenseWall, Sandboxie, ... the row is long. ThreatFire is also good as long you don't allow anything, so always say NO when ThreatFire asks something.
5. Image Backup Software (and File Backup Software).

I have a similar setup and my computer cleans and repairs itself automatically during each reboot.
The dream of any average user.

Ignore/delete unknown emails and don't download any objects from an unknown source. That is the difficult part of this setup or any other setup, because people are too curious.

 

Today a friend of mine catched this nastie with OA:

0E8F7D0D13406AF8389ABA4D53EC378B

my AV+ failed to recognise it, and google was short-spoken.

Virus appeared to be very basic, but seems like relatively new. Infects root directory with autorun.inf and qd.cmd, which actually is exe and puts itself in mountpoint2.

 

Those are bad "changes" on your harddisk and that's what most malware do, they change your harddisk and that's how they betray themselves, that's their weakness.
A boot-to-restore (Returnil/ShadowDefender) removes ANY change, while a scanner doesn't remove any change, it removes only the changes, it knows.
I don't trust any of my security software and my boot-to-restore fixes all the failures of my security softwares and my computer is clean again.

 

When you buy a Vista32 box,

LUA with UAC in quiet mode (TweakUAC), plus Avira free, VistaFireWallControl free and DefenseWall will do the trick