What are you currently using

Hello and greetings. I've been browsing these forums for a little bit now. I ended up following a link while i was reading about eraser. I've been in numerous threads reading and learning.

I am trying to get a perfect setup. While i doubt there is one i was curious as to what you gentlemen (and ladies?) are currently running on your machine and perhaps if you have a bit of time i would be curious as to why.

As for myself i am in the testing stages trying out various things....

But i suppose if i could rephrase the question now that i said all of this it would be "What software do you find vital or Do you consider to be a must when installing a system"

Thanks in advance for your time!

DT

 

My firewall would be first, so after much reading and investigating I chose Comodo Firewall Pro 2.4 because I can run it in Automatic and forget it. Some folks like to tweek so they can do that too.
My AV is Eset NOD32 because they do frequent definition updates, and it's nice software.
Anti-Spyware apps are SUPERAntispyware, AVG running real time, because I get frequent updates, SpywareBlaster because it doesn't scan it just sits there and blocks malware, and BOClean from the Comodo site that catches trojans as they attempt to open.
Over the years I have tried quite a few apps but these are the best as far as I know.

 

For security I have NOD32 and Ghostwall, but I might give Eset Security Suite another try. I use said apps because they are light and do their job well.

There also various non-security apps that I install.

 

I use xB Machine as my entire operating system, which is so much easier than installing an operating system and setting up all the software and settings.

 

System TuneUp,Spyware Blaster,Comodo Firewall are three that I install right away.XP AntiSpy and Win Patrol Plus are two more programs that I install soon after.

 

Please excuse my ignorance but what is the xB Machine? I googled it and went to the website but all it contained was a screenshot.

 

Hello,

1. Firewall
2. Firefox + extensions
3. Imaging software
4. Anything else I fancy

Mrk

 

There is no "perfect setup" - what's vital to me may not be vital to you.
But why limit security options to the PC that you are using?
On the PC itself - a *.nix/BSD/OSS operating system.
A UTM solution reduces system overhead.
A UTM is a consolidation of (mostly) OSS apps in one hardware piece, and you pay for the convenience. You could also set up a separate cheap(er) PC running similar apps as a gateway/firewall solution and save some money.
Using TOR will keep the snoops honest.

 

It is hard to sum it up, but I would say Windows Vista and CCleaner, because they both offer the ultimate security and reliability, so nothing else is needed.
CCleaner set to run at startup is a malware and problems solving software, I just can not imagine Windows without it, it is like running a car without watter.

 

Dust,

That isn't ignorance at all. Nobody knows about it yet. It is a secure, portable, encrypted, computing environment that we developed at XeroBank.

It will shortly be available, and will be released on August 3rd, at DefCon.

How it works is like this:

1) You put in the CD

2) You run the virtual machine either on VMWare or QEMU (open source)

3) You get a new window which pops up that boots a hardened linux machine. You login and it creates a password, your data is loop-aes encrypted. This linux machine is tiny and very secure, and pre-configured for anonymity networks.

4) You can expand the screen to use your whole screen and it acts just like a normal operating system. It is so easy to use, it even looks like windows. You want to browse the web anonymously? Just click firefox. Anonymized email? click thunderbird. Instant messaging? No problem. Want to do it at broadband speed? Enter in your xerobank account number, and it will automatically fetch your xerobank account configurations.

5) Put it on USB and take it with you. Use it on mac, linux, or windows.

6) Soon it will even be bootable. Don't trust that public computer? Drop in the CD and boot it to the xB Machine directly and bypass the local operating system. It will autodetect your hardware, set up everything, and keep on going, and boot you into the super friendly operating system. Got an encrypted filesystem at home or at work? We can mount it into the operating system so you can securely work from anywhere.

7) It is very high tech. Not like any of the other liveCDs out there. Very elegant design, very smart, and hardened against hacking and compromising attacks. What would normally take a computer security expert hundreds of hours, and cost you tens of thousands to develop into a hardened operating system, you've got it free, portable, and it can run on virtually any machine.

Forget firewalling, say goodbye to viruses and worms and rootkits forever, they don't have access to even install anything on the system.

 

That definately sounds awesome Steve. I'll definately be keeping my eyes open come Aug.5 (i believe thats the date). Thanks for taking the time to inform me.

What brought me to this forum was I was searching a way to secure delete files and i came across a link to this exact post. It got mo thinking that in my lazyness i failed to keep up with information like this.

So i then decided to make sure to learn about as much as humanly possible to make my machine neat, safe, secure and as clean as possible.

I want to thank everyone for their responses thus far. I will be going over programs that i havent heard of before in the next coming days.


Currently i am running:
AVG Free (because it had come recommended at the time when i was tired of Norton)
Zone Alarm (Switching over to Ghostwall)
Eraser (set up like that thread i linked)
CCleaner
NTREGOPT
Index.dat suite
CleanCache
Spybot Search & Destroy

Obviously you can see that the Exit Sequence i read appealed to me. So i went from there and searched these forums. Next i am going to play with Encryption (as i know nothing) and hopefully keep up with all the new information coming out.

Again thanks to everyone to reading and giving insight. Its always easier to get suggestions from one thread as opposed to endlessly searching through forums (Which i guarentee you i will get back to)

 

Spam?

 

I am not sure what you are implying with this rather vague post.

 

Looks like a setup to me.

 

Ignore it.