More online protection (Q&A)

[Felix The Assassin]

To continue with what has transpired in Variol's thread referencing "adaware", I would like to get comments on this.

Corporate has provided me with MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition. Includes everything except the automatic butter spreader for the toast upon ejection.

Anyway, I must digress, I have *gulp* formatted an old HDD and installed, *cough* that OS from Redmond, in order to become productive with my corporate gift. In doing such, I spent 20 odd hours of unrecoverable loss of time "updating" my not-so-ancient version of XP SP2, bah humbug.

Corporate this year has changed the home user package to this:
http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products...ion/index.html

What do you all think?

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

I think that, not only am I not software savvy, but I'm Canadian to boot! :shock:

Things seem to be running cool here for now. I wish I didn't have all these processes running, but what can ya' do?

Did my "bone" help any with regard to the modem?

[ElfBane]

Originally Posted by Felix The Assassin To continue with what has transpired in Variol's thread referencing "adaware", I would like to get comments on this. Corporate has provided me with MS Office 2007 Enterprise Edition. Includes everything except the automatic butter spreader for the toast upon ejection. Anyway, I must digress, I have *gulp* formatted an old HDD and installed, *cough* that OS from Redmond, in order to become productive with my corporate gift. In doing such, I spent 20 odd hours of unrecoverable loss of time "updating" my not-so-ancient version of XP SP2, bah humbug. Corporate this year has changed the home user package to this: http://us.trendmicro.com/us/products...ion/index.html What do you all think?

Felix, does your ISP provide an AV/AS security suite? Mine (BrightHouse) does, so I use that...Free is good. A lot of times Pay is better, but Free is still cool. I'm sure Bungleau will be along, he seems to be the TrendMicro guy.

WinXP SP3 is out. I recommend you get it. Now, once you have XP fully updated, have a decent AV/AS suite (only ONE AV, ok?), Firewall (again, only one "active"), and go thru a router.....you're going to be pretty secure. BTW, all routers have firewalls, but they don't count against the 'one firewall rule'.

Ok, once this is done, you can pretty much add whatever extra you want,,, Anti-malware/spyware stuff, Registry checkers and monitors, etc. Just don't let them stay resident unless you have a fairly buffed rig with a couple of GB's of RAM. That way they won't bog down performance. Hope this helps.

[ElfBane]

Originally Posted by Variol (Farseer) Elmwood I wish I didn't have all these processes running, but what can ya' do?

You could start with.....no porn sites, no online poker sites, and ditch the P2P file transfer sites. That might be a good start.

[Felix The Assassin]

Originally Posted by ElfBane Felix, does your ISP provide an AV/AS security suite? Mine (BrightHouse) does, so I use that...Free is good. A lot of times Pay is better, but Free is still cool. I'm sure Bungleau will be along, he seems to be the TrendMicro guy. WinXP SP3 is out. I recommend you get it. Now, once you have XP fully updated, have a decent AV/AS suite (only ONE AV, ok?), Firewall (again, only one "active"), and go thru a router.....you're going to be pretty secure. BTW, all routers have firewalls, but they don't count against the 'one firewall rule'. Ok, once this is done, you can pretty much add whatever extra you want,,, Anti-malware/spyware stuff, Registry checkers and monitors, etc. Just don't let them stay resident unless you have a fairly buffed rig with a couple of GB's of RAM. That way they won't bog down performance. Hope this helps.

SP3 was part of that 20 hours!

Free is good, always, how can one measure the value of free? Less than 5 minutes to download 45MB program from corporate web site, I feel that is an adequate price for the product. It's downloaded, sitting in my download folder, just waiting to be un-compressed and let lose.

This rig is wired into the same router/modem the spousal unit's is, so both of those are working. Windstream here offers McAfee Security Suite for $2.99 on a recurring monthly fee, does not = free. It reads like the Trend Micro data sheet, covers everything except the kitchen sink, which is covered by the hardware rider affiliated with a different suite.

I'm not Trend Micro savvy either, that's why I sent the shout out. This appears to be one of those that if I don't like it, it's a start fresh issue, and another several hours of ensuing updates after I set the system right.

[Bungleau]

I wouldn't call myself a TrendMicro fanboy or anything like that... it's just an online scan tool that I've used and found useful, and that I can easily remember

That said, I think the *real* answer comes down to breaking down the elements of security (firewall, AV, anti-spyware, etc.) and deciding what you want to have for each piece. I don't think there's one *right* answer... although there are certainly some wrong ones.

[Felix The Assassin]

Originally Posted by Bungleau I wouldn't call myself a TrendMicro fanboy or anything like that... it's just an online scan tool that I've used and found useful, and that I can easily remember That said, I think the *real* answer comes down to breaking down the elements of security (firewall, AV, anti-spyware, etc.) and deciding what you want to have for each piece. I don't think there's one *right* answer... although there are certainly some wrong ones.

Your a lot of help!

If it were still Norton CE, then this would be a non-issue, however, I really don't know enough anymore about protecting a MS machine. This product reads to be a full suite, and it is free for me to use one copy at home on one machine. Based upon what I have read in the other thread, it carries one of everything listed, however, it is from all within one package, which was advised against, IIRC. And being the type person I am, if it makes me unhappy, I can make it go away...Which usually entails several hours of new configuration and updates.

[Variol (Farseer) Elmwood]

How does an "assassin" become a computer geek anyway?

[Bungleau]

Picky, picky... remember that help and advice are often worthy what you pay for 'em

Some quick googling to find other people's product reviews...

SC Magazine, apparently a Security professional trade mag...

Verdict:A good all-around network protection package, it had fewer features than some other products in this category, but also had one of the lower price tags.

Another... a couple of user reviews here.

I didn't find a lot of reviews on-line about it, so I can't offer much else. Not that I've offered much so far...

[Felix The Assassin]

Originally Posted by Variol (Farseer) Elmwood How does an "assassin" become a computer geek anyway?

Some bullets cost $2.75 others however, can cost in the thousands.

Computer simulation bullets cost nothing, and it takes the 'human' factor to operate said simulators!