Firewall and antivirus package

^whitey^

At the moment i'm using norton anti-virus 2003 and zone alarm.

I'd prefer to be using an antivirus and firewall fom the same company in the one package for the sake of updates e.t.c.

Any suggestions? Or should i just stick with what i have?

Cheers.

Capt'n Midnight

A good firewall should not need patches.

Firewalls block packets that did not originate from your machine.
Zonealarm also asks you to allow/disallow new programs to connect.

Ports 135,137,139,445 should have been blocked by ISP's for the last ten years ..

And as for getting two products from the same company - suppose they have the same vunerability ... (likely 'cos it's the same design team/methology) - defense in depth ..

RicardoSmith

I'm using the free zone alarm and free avg AV. Is there anything I'm losing out on, secrurity wise by not buying software.

Pimp Ninja

I'll recommend the following..

AVG - Antivirus
http://www.grisoft.com

Its free, and its quite good and reliable. Updates, though not as frequent as some of the major vendors are regular enough.

Kerio Personal Firewall
http://www.kerio.com

Again free, this is always a plus. It is the best personal firewall I have ever come accross. I believe that it's based on the old "tiny personal firewall," but I've never seen that so I cant comment.
It is as good as the best of them in some respects. It allows IP address filtering, port filtering, application filtering. Simply put its great...

Capt'n Midnight

You are running windows.

In case it missed you attention recently there have been three major patches to the RPC function to fix holes that have been around since 1995 (NT4 beta).

There is a hole in IE that is still waiting for a patch.

You should get all the usual AdAware and Spyware apps too.

Bottom line though, all the AV / Malware programs only check for known problems. Zonealarm will help protect against new trojans. But you are using an OS (which has IE) which has 8 year old security flaws popping up from time to time..

RicardoSmith

What AdAware and Spyware would you suggest?

flamegrill

Norton internet Security 2003, comes with a firewall and anti-virus from the one vendor and isn't too costly either. I think it retails around the 80 euro mark or so.

Not sure on the merits of it versus any of the others but I'm sure it'll stand up a bit better than the free ones, in regard to catching virus etc, as symantec seem to have their eye on the ball for that.

Paul

p.s. one thing to note,is the anti-virus updates last for a year only, so tis a pain

RicardoSmith

Why spend 80 euro when you can get a free product that does the same thing?

flamegrill

Well you actually pay for quality software and full featured software. You'll note that both avg free and zonealarm free have some of the features of their paid buddies turned off/disabled.

So with your 80 euro you get feature rich, properly supported software that you know is going to work. I use avg free here, its updates are not very frequent, I know that symantec can have as many as 3 updates in a day if not more. There is a difference from paying and using free software.

Paul

Capt'n Midnight

Agreed there is a differece between the lite/personnal versions and the commercial versions. But as to whether the better version is worth its price... - how much is your data worth - do you have a backup etc..

You can buy an external hardware firewall for the price of some of the software versions. No question as to which is better if there is a flaw in the OS.

If you use Sophos AV at work then the license allows it to be used by the same user at home too..

The point is that home users can't afford the really good Firewalls and so won't ever be 100% safe (esp if use unpatched windows/ie/office etc.) So if free software gets > 99% (say) and you can't get to 100% how much should you pay for the in between...

Looking up M$ site and setting all the security options in IE and turning off auto preview in outlook and blocking as many attachemntes as possible would possibly be better than relying on third party products to protecting you as you go clicking on YES to everything on the internet / emails .

RicardoSmith

Personally for years I've never needed AV or Firewall software until that last virus. But I'm pretty good at keeping backups of my stuff. Learnt the hard way years ago. So far AdAware and Spyware is the only thing I'm aware thats extra for the €80. Theres cheaper software to manage that too.

Personally I'm not of the opinion that cheaper is worse for many things. Most of the time all the extra expense buys you is more expensive marketing. Symantec wasn't any better at stopping those latest viruses than the free software was.

sci0x

I suggest that you use Norton AntiVirus 2003 which also includes Norton Personal Firewall, even though I use ZoneAlarm Pro as well.

To protect yoourself from spyware use Spybot Search & Destry and Ad-aware as one both programs picks up spyware that the other mightn't pick up.

Floater

Has anyone found firewall software that works with Windows 2000 Professional? i.e. one that doesn't cause the system to hang or do other unpredictable and unwelcome things?


Floater