Any recommendations for further security?

[mojowon]

Hey everyone,

I am currently using the following setup on my laptop. My laptop has Windows Vista OS 64 bit. Anyone who can recommend any further free programs or remove some would be appreciated. I am using the Vista firewall. I may be using too many programs and it is overkill. What do you guys think? Is there any I can get rid that may be just taking up resources? My main concern is security. Thanks in advance for your help.

1. AVG 9.0 free antivirus
2. Malwarebytes free edition
3. A2 malware free edition
4. SuperAntispyware free edition
5. Adware free edition
6. Spybot free edition
7. Immunet Protect free edition
8. Keyscrambler free edition
9. WinPatrol free edition
10. PC Tools Antispyware free edition
11. Secunia Personal Software Inspector free

[kendall.a]

You will probably get several differing opinions here. First of all, I assume that most of these you only use on-demand and do not run them resident. You certainly do not need them all to be running resident. You really only need an anti virus and WinPatrol running resident. Some will argue that you should also run Immunet resident; but I have no experience with using it so I can't say.

With that assumption, the other programs are basically just taking up hard drive space. And, you can run them on-demand so there's no real harm in keeping them.

However, if it was me, I would get rid of Adware ,Spybot, and PC Tools antispyware. You have spyware/malware covered very well with MWB, SAS, and A2. You don't really need the other 3. Again, there's really no harm in keeping them, but I've taken on a much more minimalist approach lately and don't want to keep software on my computer that I'm not using regularly.

Keyscrambler is good, but can be somewhat of a pain. I hope that you are also using WOT. Secunia is fine, but there are several others that you could look at as well.

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best...te-monitor.htm

What I don't see is a firewall or Sandboxie. You might want to consider adding one or both.

[MidnightCowboy]

Originally Posted by kendall

What I don't see is a firewall or Sandboxie. You might want to consider adding one or both.

I'm with that (and everything else Kendall said ) Sandboxie would be an, if not the, most important addition.

Vista firewall is fine - Sphinx adds an easier to understand dimension to it.

http://www.sphinx-soft.com/Vista/

Full details about how the two interact with each other are described in their site details/forum.

[extract] - Designed for Windows 7 & Vista

"Windows7FirewallControl is completely based on Windows Filtering Platform (WFP), the security core introduced in Windows Vista and does not install any third party kernel drivers. The Built-in Firewall is based on the same WFP as well. The both products work entirely independently. Windows7FirewallControl uses the Built-in Firewall only once, at the first start to grab the initial settings. Due to complete product independence you can switch the Built-in Firewall ON or OFF at your option".

[Terarus]

I would probably go with something like this:

1. AVG 9.0 free antivirus
2. Malwarebytes free edition
4. SuperAntispyware free edition
8. Keyscrambler free edition
9. WinPatrol free edition
11. Secunia Personal Software Inspector free (on-demand only)

Sandboxie is worth adding to the list, but if you don't like it then having a limited user account and software restriction policies is also good. You can also swap prevx (fb edition) for keyscrambler since it protects against keyloggers and other forms of data stealing methods; though sandboxie doesnt play nice with it.

[bo.elam]

When I used AVG free, everything was fine until I met a rootkit so in my
opinion that is a hole you need to cover. You will take care of that by
adding Sandboxie.


Bo