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By admin, February 19, 2009 14:54

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I saw this comment today on a malware site and I normally read them to see how folks troll malware sites looking for blame.
Folks, malware is your problem, not anyone elses.  I am constantly reminded how people fail to understand that its their actions and choices that cause the infections, and today social engineering is a big reason.
Even malware experts are not immune from falling victim to their tricks.  Its been like this for years and outside of the increase in targetted attacks,
its still the #1 reason.

Continue reading 'Editorial: Understanding why Malware infects your PC'»

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By Admin, February 18, 2007 11:00

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In the latest of the current software we are ready to wrap up our final review of Internet Security packages from the major vendors.

We did not review Norton’s/Symantec’s or McAfee’s offerings due to the popularity of these items in the store and the fact that they are the most primitive and intrusive software install offerings in the market. Installing one of these packages in the past usually left us with a box we had to completely rebuild. We tested them out earlier in 2006 when they were available to beta testers and we decided not to bother. If you have used their older versions these are not that different nor better or improved.

To the topic we are discussing CA’s offering.

Computer Associates has a slogan that people have associated with it which says "The place good software goes to die". We certainly agree with this slogan. This company in 2005 bought our favorite firewall product Tiny firewall. This software has completely disappeared and now has been brought back to life in a ‘less filling’ option called CA Firewall. The ISS package comes complete with anti virus, anti spam, anti spyware, and firewall.
This package is one of the better offerings in this field only in the sense that the package is very intuitive to use and requires very little input from the user. If your users are not security savvy or like being dialogged by software to make decisions, then this package is it.

The anti virus offering is below par, but still decent enough to not miss any of our test patterns. The anti spyware is pestpatrol which is one of the better packages on the market and CA still offers access to its wonderful database of files. The anti spam is basic white/black lister so nothing special here, other than its clean and works well to protect you immediately. However its not complete alone so we would not recommend this product on its own, but with the ISS package features anti virus so it can also help prevent infection in addition to blocking. The firewall is very well done, but simply is missing very critical components that were part of Tiny Firewall. I assume that this is only being offered now with commercial products.

The real downside of this whole package is its lack of documentation, a feature comparison, its lack of instruction, its terrible help file and its just strange terminology.

Sure there isn’t much to set or change, but for experts who want more control this software is simply inadequate especially coming from Tiny’s excessively tweaky interface, your constantly feeling like you are missing things, and rightfully you are.

It doesn’t prevent anything like keyloggers from working or stealth dll intercepts or global hooks (except in a generic sense which doesn’t give enough detail to determine good or evil intent) so it’s still not going to deter any 0 day vulnerabilities but for the lightweight user or for your kids computer this is a competent package.
We give this a 6 out of 10, which if I’m not mistaken is the best rating we have given a ‘Integrated Security Solution’ ever.

Surprise to us that its from Computer Associates. Maybe this is a change to that old slogan but they are still paddling up the river with the same old boat. Good job guys, maybe next year we get a new boat to float in.