Firewall sofware 4

[piggin23]

My license for McAfee has just run out and I now require a new firewall/antivirus application.
Any ideas???

Thanks

[CyberChris]

I use my routers hardware firewall along with windows own and for AV I use Avast free edition.

As long as you carefull when browsing the web not to install spyware etc from popups you will be fine.

[lodore]

definatly use a hardware firewall.
if you want software suite i reccomend F-Secure

[piggin23]

I have a firewall on my internet router but I like to be careful. lol

[aidanjt]

hardware router + windows firewall is plenty enough.

[Pazza]

hardware firewall but I would suggest Microsoft's antivirus software - works well I find and not power hungry like others - also got good reviews.

http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

I use it on Vista x64 & Windows 7 x64 without issues.

Edit: it's free also.

[peterb]

hardware router + windows firewall is plenty enough.

As he says - plenty enough in most situations. However to understand why you need to consider the threats and risks.

Fistly is the threat of someone directly attacking your PC through port scanning - and make no mistake, your router is scanned hundreds or thousands of times a day - usually by bots or machines running a script. If you don't have any open ports for inbound traffic, a NAT router will protect you against all but a very determined directed attack, and if you are in the category of erson or organisation where you are likely to be subject to that attack, you wouldn't be asking questions about it on Hexus!

The second risk is that you will open an e mail that contains malware, or visit a website that downloads malware. That malware may be a virus that replicates itself from your machine, or sets it up as a bot, with remote control by the botmaster, or aims to grab personal data in some phishing scam.

The best protection against that is you - never open e mails or attachments from an unknown source, look at the headers of suspicious e mails to see if they really do come from where they seem to. Supporting your filtering are the tools, virus scanners, personal firewalls or intrusion detection software that detect the outbound connection that the malware must establish to be useful to the author. Because these are outbound connections, the NAT router won't protect you, but software that detects an unknown (to it) process creating outbound connections will flag up an alert.

However, the other precaution you can take is to ensure that for daily use, you oerate the computer's operating system with the minimum privileges you can. You should never routinely use an administrator account for routine daily use.

Early windows systems (or, more correctly application developers) were bad at this, and some apps would only run (or install) in an account with admin privileges - that is getting better.

So, to recap, a NAT enabled router, and one of the free AV scanners and the windows firewall willl leave you safe. You can add more, but you are getting diminishing returns and\ the risk of making the system less easy to use.

[piggin23]

peterb

Thank you for clarifying my problem.
My concern is not so much something getting in but what happens if I do click on the something that is malicious by mistake.

[12GaugeShotty]

My license for McAfee has just run out and I now require a new firewall/antivirus application.
Any ideas???

Thanks

Uninstall McAfee.

AV: http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
Firewall: Use the Windows integrated firewall. Works like a charm.

Scared of malware? Use VirtualBox and browse the web in a VM. You can take a snapshot so if the VM is infected just revert back to the snapshot and all is well. Host OS remains uneffected by any malware in the guest VM.

[aidanjt]

Scared of malware? Use VirtualBox and browse the web in a VM. You can take a snapshot so if the VM is infected just revert back to the snapshot and all is well. Host OS remains uneffected by any malware in the guest VM.

Aye, this is a great suggestion for the ultra-paranoid.

[12GaugeShotty]

Aye, this is a great suggestion for the ultra-paranoid.

Must you troll in every thread? This is not a competition, AID.

[aidanjt]

Must you troll in every thread? This is not a competition, AID.

I'm not trolling, I'm being serious, it's a great suggestion.