Dynamic Security Agent

Good evening folks. I have frequently sought out, via thread searching or direct questions, advice from Wilders. What has made the most sense is to find that which works best for my system and use that. I was golden until the Avast! upgrade. Avast!, Pc Tools FW and Sandboxie would not work together on my system. I love Avast! and Sandboxie so I had to come up with something different.

The short story is that I have put together a new combination for my Toshiba laptop and would like input as to whether I have my bases covered or not, or perhaps there is redundancy that can be eliminated or substituted.

The following combo passes my "works well on my system test" by getting along and not bogging down the works, so if I am reasonably well covered I'll keep it. Let me know what you think.

Thanks for the input folks.

Dynamic Security Agent
Threatfire free
Avast! for home
Windows Defender is on
Firefox with no-script and adblocker
sandboxie
Windows Home Premium

 

Greetings,

I have a laptop with a similar setup.

ThreatFire free + Dynamic Security Agent.

Slight but notable (imho) differences :
- XP PRO set as LUA + SuRun
- NO real time resident AV (just on demand checks)
- & Disk Image backups as a last resort.

Regards,
- IVV.

 

You may as well install the complete package-Web root Desktop firewall-as DSA is the HIPS component causing all the popups-to get better security.

 

You can leave out windows defender.

 

Thanks for the replies. I stayed away from Webroot desktop firewall because of the problems mentioned here in various forums. Also, the Webroot site does not list DSA as a component of the firewall anymore.

DSA says that it includes a firewall, and in fact the company now markets "Private Firewall" as well as some other products. When I installed it, my plan was to use DSA as a HIPS and use the Vista firewall. for in bound. DSA turned off the Vista firewall upon installation and is listed in my security setup as the firewall.

It looks like this may be a new product combination (it is to me). If someone more firewall savvy than I can take a look at this "new" DSA and give me an opinion as to the completeness of the protection, ie firewall (yes/no), I would be grateful. It runs nice and lite on my system.

I am behind a NAT router when at home and occasionally use wifi when on the road.

Thanks again folks.

 

Someone from the company has posted here in the past, and explained that DSA does contain the private firewall module. The difference between the two is that the firewall in DSA is not configurable. Also, at least with xp, it can coexist with your regular firewall. I am not familiar with Vista so I do not know if that still applies.

Btw, great game last night.

 

LOL, Thanks Benny. I guess it was nice to see that the Yankees can still give them a little competition.

Thanks for the feedback. If the Private firewall module along with the HIPS provides good protection, I'll be OK with that. I really wanted to get input as to whether I had a gaping hole in my protection.

I surf safely in a sandbox and don't open unexpected attachments in e-mail. Boring, but hopefully safe.

Thanks,

Tom

 

Your welcome Code_Blue:

As to whether the DSA firewall is sufficient as a stand alone firewall has been kicked around here and I am not nearly knowledgeable enough to answer that myself. But like you, I am behind a router (with a fw) and was not solely relying on DSA for inbound protection.