Does My Security Setup Need a Diet?

My ultimate goal is to trim down my resident, "active" security setup to four or five core applications in addition to the Netgear RP614 v2 router with NAT and SPI that I am currently using. FYI, I don't use P2P, IM, download music or play games online. Additionally, my pc is a Dell Dimension 8400 with WinXP SP2, 3.2 GHz P4, 1 Gb RAM and 200 Gb HD. My present security setup is as follows:

Primary Browser: Opera
Email Client: Eudora

System Hardening:
Disabled fifty-two WinXP SP2 Services
Harden-It
Samurai
Windows Worms Door Cleaner(WWDC)

Resident Security Applications:
Netgear RP614 v2 router with NAT and SPI
BOClean
Look'n'Stop
NOD32
Online Armor
RegRun Pro
Task Catcher
UnHackMe

On-Demand Security Applications:
Blacklight Beta
Counterspy
Ewido(free)
RootKitRevealer
RootKit Hook Analyzer
TrojanHunter

Miscellaneous:
Ad-Aware(free)
Spybot Search & Destroy
Spywareblaster
WormGuard

Any comments or opinions to this matter would be greatly appreciated.


Peace & Love,

CogitoErgoSum

 

How about keeping this based on the Blue formula?

Drop - remove realtime

Regrun pro is good, for Online Armor is improving on registry control I think.
Task catcher you don't need it.

Unhackme you can keep on resident, but I personally think given your risk profile you don't need it all the time

 

Thanks deviladvocate for your input.


Peace & Love,

CogitoErgoSum

 

No thanks are necessary. And do keep in mind my alias before you consider taking my advise.

 

I actually agree with DA on all but one point, I would keep RegRun. It protects the registry differently than OA, and provides a lot of other options that can make fixing things a lot easier. I have a tendancy to not even think of it as a security app as much as a "system helper", it really is quite useful.

Everyone is going to have their own preferences, however. Ultimately you should go with whatever you feel comfortalble with. Although I agree that a high degree of redunancy isn't a particularly good thing, some people may find benefit from a little, and a second program that's more focused may provide a more clear indication of what's going on. It all really depends on how you use each program.

 

Thanks Notok for your input. Tentatively, I am seriously considering uninstalling Task Catcher and UnHackMe.


Peace & Love,

CogitoErgoSum

 

I think you exagerating with security.You use so manny applications, i cannot understand why.This obsession on most people on this forum gives me the impression that you forget the most important thing: you need to be secure to do other things, the security itself its not an objective.Don't tell me that using so much applications is normal because it's not. You can reduce applications to three or four, more than enough.So please tell me one good reason why i need to use three antispyware,two antitrojans and two firewalls, one hardware and another software.Who is watching me?CIA,FBI, KGB?

 

I'm never quite sure how firmly your tongue is in cheek....,

Please bear in mind that would be my type of recommendation for maximum coverage from commercial applications, typical users can get by fine with less.

Cheers,

Blue

 

Hey blue, you are right about the maximum security thingie. But given that the guy is currently in ultra-paranonia mode, I figure recommending, that he cut the bloat to just a router, software firewall and maybe one AV(or not), isn't likely to go down well.

Hey Notok, Yes I know you like Regrun, but cuts has to be made if I need to go down to his target of 4-5 realtime. And online armor covers more than regrun.

You are right google, it's not normal. It's fun.

Not to freak you out further, but lots of us run at least 2 if not more security betas for fun too on top of 4-5++ other stuff. If the purpose is security, we wouldn't run betas not on the main production machine anyway