Security Novice

[daverules]

I have a network in my home, and ever since my brother recently downloaded a virus I've been a little worried about security. I've been a little concerned before, as I have zonealarm running. But, I've done that mainly to prevent programs that I believe shouldn't need Internet access. I also found a virus with ZA too.

So, are there better firewalls than ZA, or are there other measures I can take to make my computer secure?

Basically, I don't know much about this stuff, other than being able to install and config ZA. Are there any websites that might be helpful to me?

[blebs]

Welcome to the world of security daverules.

First, the only way to be truly secure is to NOT connect to the internet or even turn your computer on for that matter. We all know that isn't practical nor real though.

You mention a network in your home, do you use a router for this network? If you do, this is the first line of defense and running ZA is secondary, but in my opinion, necessary, to catch anything that the router doesn't.

Are there better firewalls then ZA? Yes, but you need to be able to understand rule sets and be pretty familiar with protocols, which I'm not, so I use ZA myself.

Our rule of thumb here is
1) Anti-Virus Program with updated definitions at all times.

2) Firewall-either hardware (router) or software (ZA) or even better, a combination of both.

3. A copy of Ad Aware to pick off spyware and phone home garbage, that is a risk to you and your computer. Some spyware actually replace system files with copies of there own and can make for real headaches.

4) Anti-Trojan program of some sort. AV programs pick up a very limited amount of trojan programs.

If you have all of the above, your about as secure as you can be, and in todays world, anything, anytime, anywhere, can happen. New holes in the operating systems are constantly being discovered and exploited.

This should get you started and if you have more questions, ask away! :)

Interesting reads and testing.
http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36480

Anti-Trojan Programs
http://www.moosoft.com/download.php

http://www.anti-trojan.net/at.asp?l=en

http://www.agnitum.com/download/

Firewalls
http://www.zonelabs.com/download/index.html

http://www.tinysoftware.com/home/tiny?s=3190706199471832046A1&&pg=tpf_summary

http://www.sygate.com/

Spyware Removal

http://tomcoyote.com/lsindex.html Ad Aware 5.62 FREE!

http://www.spychecker.com/download.html

Anti-Virus Programs

http://www.grisoft.com/html/us_index.htm AVG is Free!

http://www.symantec.com/

[Stef]

Want to know how secure you really are?

Get Nessus and scan your network for vulnerabilities, all you would need to do is grab the Win32 client and log onto a Nessus host to begin a scan. Much better then any "security scan" site around, Nessus actually tests a machine for specific vulnerabilities and attempts to exploit them. It then prints out a detailed log of everything it found.

http://www.nessus.org/

It's all GUI too and very simple to use.

Stef