Best Free Stuff

People are forever asking me whether their anti-virus or desktop firewall software is any good. Obviously I have my own preferences, and I tend to use a combination of different vendors products, but I’ve put together a list of the ones I think are the best, sorted by category. Many of these products are free for home use, or for a 60day evaluation, so use them and then decide for yourself whether they work for you.

As I said, this is my list of favorites, but I’m always interested to hear other peoples opinions, so if you have a product you think belongs on the list let me know.

The full list is available on http://www.secureyourbusinessnow.com/toolkit1.htm, and it covers anti-virus, spyware protection, desktop firewalls, spam filters and desktop backups.

Symantec being targeted

According to ZDNet Symantec corporate users are being targeted by a variant of Spybot,  a worm that has been doing the rounds for a while now. A vulnerability in Symantec Corporate Edition and Symantec Client Security is being exploited which allows the attacker to assume control of the infected computer.

Although a fix for this vulnberability has been available for the past 7 months, customers must actually go and download it. Ideally you would want the software to check for updates on a regular basis, rather than depend on user intervention.

According to the article, symantec are “re-evaluating the update mechanism for corporate tools”. What’s that old saying about locking stable doors and horses having bolted?

You can read the article in full here at
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6150560.html?tag=nl.e589

2000 Viruses

I was talking to someone yesterday who mentioned that their laptop was in being repaired. It had started hanging before christmas and they had just got a call to say it had 2000 viruses. The person I was tlaking to was giving out about McAfee, (their anti-virus software), for not catching them.

After a little discussion, it turned out that McAfee came with the laptop when it was purchased almost 2 years ago. It hadn’t been renewed since then so unless they had taken out a long tem subscription when buying the laptop, it was well out of date.

Now I’m no big fan of McAfee, but the issue here was not with the software being used. It was user education. So many people don’t understand, (and aren’t told) that virus protection is made up of software and a subscription service. If you don’t keep it up to date, you don’t get protected from any new viruses. 

I’m not criticising the user here, because why should she know this. But when she bought the laptop, (from Dell), surely they could have explained this. There is an onus on the IT community to properly educate users in this area. It’s all too easy to sit back and snigger about users who don’t know a thing about technology, but at the end of the day it’s up to the people selling and supporting the solutions to make sure they communicate more effectively.

To quote NLP’er Richard Bandler, the meaning of your communication is the response you get. The IT world at the moment is not communicating effectively with their customers.