I'm Back: Logged on to PC Startled...then Excited!

Hi folks, it's been a while! I've been busy with college - on to my last year - and being active at the other major forum on which I participate, CrackBerry.

I logged onto my PC today and was startled by a red hand of Webroot. I thought, oh no, finally an infection?! Nay, it was a notice about being upgraded to the next version in a week. (Probably should have used the green check to not cause alarm, eh?)



So, being the OCD-asker that I have the reputation of being, I'll be the first to ask:

1. What is the level of setting parity between the current version and the upcoming version? Some major settings have been trimmed down obviously, so what will WSA do with old setting backup files? Must they be re-made?

2. Sort of along the same lines, how much is there to re-configure? Knowing me, I will probably go through it all again anyway, but how many "advanced settings" have been changed? How will they convert over from current installations?

3. Green, Blue, Yellow, Red. Are those still the status colors?

4. Has the issues I have always brought up regarding by-default threat response with non-admin accounts been addressed yet? See screenshot:



Anyway, I'm VERY excited for this. And I almost forgot...I've been meaning to post about something. I will add this as question #5 in case there have been considerable changes in the new version.

5. I was having some issues with Sync suddenly months back. They SEEM to have gone away, but the odd thing is, no update change logs I can find since then mentioned ANY changes to Backup & Sync, so maybe they are still present and I am just not noticing. Backup & Sync suddenly started skipping certain files and not syncing them. Also, renaming always used to work well, but for awhile it was causing a duplicate folder to appear which was usually empty. Sometimes disabling and re-enabling fixed it, but I think I had to log out on the trouble computer and re-log in to fix it. Does this ring any bells?

Thanks!

And by the way, I love the video! Excellent idea to have two co-introduce and then have THE MAN THE MYTH, Mr. JOE JAROCH himself, show off the new product.



EDIT: I feel the compulsive, male-driven need to add that Kat is extremely cute.

 

Welcome back! Yes...Or it could look like this with the new look:https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2284932&postcount=55

 

You already have the new version?

 

No, that's a post by Triple Helix our old friend, remember him?

 

running that version version right now as a beta...

 

@STV0726
Welcome back.

 

The new version allows for more granular messaging, so we will be using green in the future

You can still use your old setting files, but I'd suggest starting fresh as the configuration has been simplified and made stronger by default.

There are significantly fewer options and they're more clear.

Yes

It depends on your Access Control settings.

I imagine this is already fixed in the 2014 release as well. We have many under-the-hood improvements throughout all areas of the product.

I wanted to start it off with, "In a world..."

 

Hello again,

I first off need to applaud Joe and the team for this wonderful new product. It truly is amazing. You'd think there would be a considerable amount of other competitor products that made it so easy to upgrade...i.e. end user having to do absolutely nothing...in this day and age...but there isn't. Fine by me. Let WSA be the supreme choice. *applaud*

I could thank Webroot/Prevx all day!

I have one question. I just went through all the settings and I very much like how they are implemented.

Only two questions I want to point out:

1. By default, "allow trusted programs to access protected data without warning" is on. What constitutes protected data? Could this potentially lead to malware that borrows trusted processes/programs gaining access to the system, provided that WSA's other layers are gotten around? Unlikely, nevertheless, but just curious. This sounds like a setting I turn off but then again, depending on what "protected data" means, I might be seeing a LOT of prompts. Just a day in the life of an obsessive-compulsive person.

2. The web shield settings have been omitted from the main console, as have the firewall settings. Now there is one place for all actual checkbox options. That's a very good thing indeed. The interesting thing is, the firewall tab in advanced settings has some web shield settings above it. What was the reasoning behind this?

Going with #2, I read in another post that Joe said there were some more changes coming to the web shield, correct? Will these upcoming changes that were omitted from the initial 2014 release add more settings? If so, I just want to know so I can delay taking all my setting screenshots and backing up setting configuration until then. Thanks!

So again, this is awesome. I literally had a nerdgasm when I saw the new interface. It really is that good.

 

As I understand it, there won't be much to see within the GUI, but when the new web filtering is active there will be a whitelist.txt file stored at C:\ProgramData\WRData\wrURL. It won't be exposed via the UI as Webroot saw very few users changing website classifications in the earlier product version.

 

Thanks!

Protected data means screen contents, clipboard data, and other information covered by the Identity Shield. Trusted processes are authenticated and only allowed through if executed in a trusted manner (meaning, not from malware), so you have nothing to worry about with the default settings. Some leaktests end up getting whitelisted but they aren't malicious themselves.

A number of less technical users believe that anything that scans websites is a firewall and we had some confusion for how the settings were laid out previously, so we combined the web shield settings with the firewall to keep all internet-based protection in the same place.

They will not be adding any new settings, but will have some user experience differences when a malicious website is encountered (but you're safe to take screenshots now )

Thanks again!