Safe'n'Sec, still around?

Maybe I have an old link or something...

but I can't seem to get a web page for them for the last few days.

Safe'n'Sec was a product that was at the top of my "this one looks like a definite purchase once it is developed a little more" list.

 

Hi Gary,

Same here. I wanted to take a look at what was happening, and it seems like the site has been down for a couple of days.

Rich

 

They are still there. There must be server problems on their end since the link even from within SnS is now turning up empty. I visited their site yesterday (or possibly Thursday) with no problem and have been in e-mail contact with them this week also - so I definitely know that they are alive and well.

Blue

PS - To check I tried to connect to the update server - it's a no go. Also, going back over a couple of e-mails, they had noted some issues with their mailserver recently.

 

The main site has been okay from this end for the last two days at least and their support is also alive and kicking as I have had 3 e-mails from Konstantin to-day!!!!

But their Update Servers are definitely down.

 

It looks like whatever the problem was, it has now been corrected. I was just able to get onto their site.

Rich

 

Could someone post a link? Is it better than a RegDefend / ProcessGuard combo?

 

You mean to their main site? It's here.

Hard question to answer right now. They are obviously competing products. Here's a brief synopsis from their website that another poster pointed to from their internal forum. Part of the difficulty in answering is that they are targeting somewhat different audiences, part of it is due to the development stage of SnS (it's seems to be still coming together with respect to the full feature set), and part of it is due to your personal desires and likely threats encountered.

Personally, I think that it is a very nice package and it has some very well thought out features. I am currently running it on my machines.

Blue

 

Thanks for the link to their main site. Different audiences? Please elaborate.

 

My pleasure. On the audience targeting - these are my impressions only as a customer of all three products.

RegDefend/PG are rock solid hardcore applications. To use them to their fullest potential you really need to know what's going on. Neophyte users can take advantage of them as well, but if they start doing some of the more esoteric twisting possible (for example, some of the publically contributed ghost files for RegDefend or continually mucking with the various settings within PG) it is easy to quicky get in difficulty. It's usually not an irreversible problem, but if you're a newbie you may panic and make it one. In my view, these are tools for advanced and/or power users who really need total control over their system and want tools that will help provide it. If I were to label the market with one or two words - it would be the security/computer enthusiast. There is an enormous amount of customization possible for both applications - for some users that's the desired power of the application, for others it will be their Achilles heel.

SafenSec takes a fair amount of what both RD and PG do and puts a very simple graded interface in front of all of it. Want to control activities? OK, there are three grades - Trusting, Strict, and Total - choose one and the prompts you see depend on the choice. So there's a bit of a decision tree before the user gets involved. I've run all three on occasion - just to get a feel for how they differ - and there is substantial overlap between RD/PG and SnS, but both sides have coverage that the other side chooses not to employ. So while there's overlap, neither approach is a subset of the other. If you go to the Star-Force website, they are clearly attempting to cultivate the small to large business client. Done properly, this approach could get traction. From what I've seen thus far, the current product is stable enough for a business environment and the centralized management tools do look to be clearly up to the task of handling typical single site needs, not sure how it would play out in a geographically scattered enterprise. If I were to try to reduce it to one or two words it would be mass-market. There are plenty of folks out there who desire strong computer security, but are not about to learn all the technical details possible.

What initially brought me to SnS was prompt fatigue. I had no problems taking a quick look at a RD/PG prompt and dealing with it. The rest of the family were more reticent. SnS looked like a potential option, so I put it on my own machine and have tested it out for some time. I've only quite recently put it on the other family machines - so I don't know if it will run into issues. So far there have not been any. It is clearly a less mature product than RD/PG - their feature sets have been stable for some time, SnS's feature set is still stabilizing. My initial impression of SnS is that they have achieved a good balance between function and ease of use. The total control mode appears to be a decent scheme to allow you to deal with almost any eventuality after the fact. Overall, I believe SnS has excellent potential.

Blue

 

Hi,

I too tried running SnS, with ProcessGuard and RegDefend up running - to try it out. I am also running ZoneAlarm Pro. On this, I have a couple of comments:

1) Currently, there appears to be some conflict between SnS and ZoneAlarm, which their technical support staff on their forum says has been fixed in their next release. You can check out their forum for more details on this. Apparently it causes the system to freeze.

2) Of some concern to me, is that after I installed SnS and rebooted, ProcessGuard alerted me that ZoneAlarm had been changed. Somehow SnS affected ZoneAlarm, and in which way still isn't clear since I haven't been able to find anyone else who is running SnS and ZoneAlarm, that is also running an application that checks for program changes. Since ProcessGuard does not protect against program changes (only alerts), I did an image restore to make sure my system is intact. A few weeks later I re-installed SnS with the same set of events. I have no idea what is going on, but I did want to report this in case others run into the same issue.

My overall feel for the company is that it is a serious company with good support and should be a serious competitor for ProcessGuard and RegDefend. Right now, PG and RegDefend get lots of good support on this forum, so I will wait for the next version of SnS and more confirmation concerning the product (especially in a ZoneAlarm enviornment) and then try it again.

Hope this helps,
Rich

 

Thanks to all. It seems SafeNSec might be better for me as I'm not technically inclined.

 

I would recommend that you trial all three applications, even if it is just for a few days each. If you go with default installs and configuration, it is virtually impossible to create a problem for yourself - that comes with customization.

Blue

 

I'll keep your suggestion in mind. I do consider the interface very important also I don't want my wife seeing a lot of prompts as she would have less of a clue than I.

 

I run RegDefend, WormGuard and ProcessGuard together. They work together nicely. ProcessGuard takes a little bit of tweaking, but I feel I have very good security with these and an anti-virus, anti-trojan and firewall running. Since they offer trial periods I would give them a try. If Safe'nSec also offers a trail period I would try them all before buying. This way you can check for system conflicts and you are protected by the trial versions.

 

Safe'N'Sec's will shortly allow control over individual applications and some deeper advanced configuration for "Power Users". Of course normal people can just choose to not access them as well, so it will maintain it's ease of use.

There are other things in the pipeline I can't comment on - yet.

Hammer, there is a free trial for SNS, also I recommend the AV version, it has the full BitDefender engine/definitions updated almost hourly for on-demand, so it won't conflict with any other AV. But it is a nice backup check for your files/drives.

 

Future development of firewall in SNS mentioned here.

 

I'm just a simple user - not a beta tester or anything like that - so I have absolutely no knowledge beyond what has appeared here and at other sites.

With that in mind, and with respect to the possibility of firewall type of functionality in the package, I can see a straight application based control feature (more or less a yes/no by application on internet access) as pretty much within the structual scope of the product. It's not really a firewall, just application based communications screening. Not sure what my sentiments would be on this either. In general, my development preference is to solidify the initial target, then go for feature set expansion. But that's just IMHO.

Blue

 

Why is SafeNsec in the antitrojan forum as opposed to another forum? Is it an antitrojan? If it is why get Ewido, BOClean etc.

 

Well, applications such as SafenSec occupy something of a middle ground. They tend to focus on behavioral characteristics, flag the behavior, and allow the user to allow or block the specific task being executed. It's in the AT section since many of the flagged behaviors are derived from trojan based malware. In this regard, an AT categorization fits.

As for BOClean/Ewido/etc. vs. SafenSec/etc. it comes down heavily on signature based vs. behavioral based approaches. I realize that it does go a little beyond that, but that's one broad stroke differentiation. A somewhat more commercial comparison is shown here. The approaches differ. Do you want to place your protection strategy in one camp, the other, or both?

Given the trends in the market these days, I wouldn't focus on an AT vs. SafenSec analysis, I'd generalize it to signature based anti-malware packages vs. pre-emptive preventative measures. Even here there is certainly overlap as many signature based programs are now augmenting their detection schemes beyond classical signatures. Further, most vendors of behavioral protection won't claim that it is a substitute to AV/AT programs, rather it is a complementary protective layer.

I happen to be running NOD32/BOClean/RedDefend/SafenSec right now. What does it buy me? Well, from NOD32 I get classic signature coverage with a healthy dose of heuristic (i.e. behavioral) analysis. BOClean scans process memory to look for any malware, again via signature, regardless of how it was packaged, sliced, or diced in the delivered form, while SnS focuses solely on a limited range of potentially damaging behaviors. RegDefend focuses solely on registry protection. All together, their impact on my system is extremely modest while protective coverage seems to me to be quite solid for the challenges I will face in the immediate future. Whether it is too much (or too little) depends on perspective. Each layer does have reasonable overlap. There happens to be appreciable between RegDefend and SafenSec. On the other side of the coin, I do not run realtime antispyware protection since, in my experience, this setup more than adequately addresses that ground. In terms of blocking activity, NOD32 is the busiest, then RegDefend/SafenSec, and finally BOClean which is virtually never bothered - but that's the point of a backup measure - if they are being constantly put into action, they're not backup, they are front line.

You can get by quite well with less, or be absolutely certain that more is required. It depends on perspective, which is molded by experience and evolves with time and changing conditions. Risk management is an inexact science, and that's what each of us is doing. In all cases we try to strike an appropriate balance.

Blue

 

Now, this makes sense!

I shall refer to this as "Blue's Slogan"

-rich
________________
~~Be ALERT!!! ~~

 

Extremely well explained thank you.

 

Rmus,

Thanks, but I do believe that majority of posters who frequent Wilders do appreciate that an overly dogmatic approach is counterproductive under highly dynamic circumstances. It's like any situation in life, you observe, take stock of the situation, and adapt your approach to improve the outcome - whatever that may be. Understanding, of course, that many paths yield effectively identical outcomes.

Cheers,

Blue