Gizmo's Freeware Forum - View Single Post

MidnightCowboy · 23. Feb 2009, 03:39 PM

In general terms there are so many good free AV, firewall and antispyware applications to choose from (especially since Rising became better known) that which one to use really comes down to personal choice as much as anything else. There are also well documented reasons for not using more than one example of the same type of defence i.e. two AV's, two firewalls or two HIPS etc. One application that I believe deserves more recognition though will work perfectly well with anything else and is worthy of consideration. Dynamic Security Agent (or DSA) is made by Privacyware the producers of the excellent paid Private Firewall and is also included as the defence module within Webroot Desktop Firewall. Basically DSA is a multi-layered defence agent which is, amongst other things, pre-programmed to recognise known Windows vulnerabilities by default. This already makes it a saint in my eyes! It will detect, block and quarantine "activity characteristic of known malware" including that associated with trojans, worms, rootkits, hacking and phishing.

General protections include attempts to:
access a protected registry key
access a protected object
initiate a foreign process
control a Windows service
create a DNS request
initiate outgoing TCP traffic

This is just part of what DSA does, and in addition will advise of any changes to an installed application's profile including things like memory use. There are no signature or other updates to worry about as DSA's architecture is not built this way. There are quite a few pop-ups as it creates rules during its learning process but after that you won't see anything unless it's an advisory or a warning. The only one down side is that it can freeze up when certain programs are launched for the first time but you can work around this by restarting and adding the application concerned into the settings manually before launching it again. If you don't know DSA please give it some space in your setup because it's worth it. No doubt Matousec's confusing addition of DSA into its Firewall Challenge has prevented a lot of people from trying this in the belief that it cannot be used alongside another firewall which is untrue.

23. Feb 2009, 03:39 PM	#4 (permalink)
MidnightCowboy Site Manager Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: South American Banana Republic, third bunch from the left Posts: 9,250	DSA (Dynamic Security Agent) In general terms there are so many good free AV, firewall and antispyware applications to choose from (especially since Rising became better known) that which one to use really comes down to personal choice as much as anything else. There are also well documented reasons for not using more than one example of the same type of defence i.e. two AV's, two firewalls or two HIPS etc. One application that I believe deserves more recognition though will work perfectly well with anything else and is worthy of consideration. Dynamic Security Agent (or DSA) is made by Privacyware the producers of the excellent paid Private Firewall and is also included as the defence module within Webroot Desktop Firewall. Basically DSA is a multi-layered defence agent which is, amongst other things, pre-programmed to recognise known Windows vulnerabilities by default. This already makes it a saint in my eyes! It will detect, block and quarantine "activity characteristic of known malware" including that associated with trojans, worms, rootkits, hacking and phishing. General protections include attempts to: access a protected registry key access a protected object initiate a foreign process control a Windows service create a DNS request initiate outgoing TCP traffic This is just part of what DSA does, and in addition will advise of any changes to an installed application's profile including things like memory use. There are no signature or other updates to worry about as DSA's architecture is not built this way. There are quite a few pop-ups as it creates rules during its learning process but after that you won't see anything unless it's an advisory or a warning. The only one down side is that it can freeze up when certain programs are launched for the first time but you can work around this by restarting and adding the application concerned into the settings manually before launching it again. If you don't know DSA please give it some space in your setup because it's worth it. No doubt Matousec's confusing addition of DSA into its Firewall Challenge has prevented a lot of people from trying this in the belief that it cannot be used alongside another firewall which is untrue.