Adrian Kingsley-Hughes weighs in on The sorry state of antivirus software.
All the ideas in the article for improving anti-malware softwares are worthwhile. I’d disagree with his simplistic sneer at “experts” who tell folks they’re to blame for their own infestation of malware. Ed Bott’s problem mentioned in the article, as well as most of the otherwise smart folks whose systems I clean from time to time, is that he was simply not careful enough. Scheduling regular full scans, doing manual scans with different anti-malware softwares and even regular, scheduled times to visit respected online scanning services aren’t enough in today’s Windows computing world. Firefox and Internet Exploder–the two most common browsers–are sadly lacking as secure browsing platforms. Out-of-the-box, I’d not use either one as a browser. With add-ons, they can both become a bit more secure (a link scanner like AVGs, WOT, whatever), but even then, “smart folks” sometimes unthinkingly do risky things on the net. Both Chrome and Opera, as two examples, are more secure in a fresh install and can be made more secure with add-ons. A sandboxed browser is even better for protecting one’s computer during browsing–and sandboxing other internet applications isn’t a bad idea, either.
And those are just the surface things one can do to become more secure using a Windows computer. More important is developing commonsense habits that make one more secure. One habit I’ve mentioned already: NEVER neglect regular full scans with a well-respected, fully up-to-date anti-malware, etc. Another is mentioned in the article: keeping one’s system (and that doesn’t just mean the OS but also one’s applications) up to date, fully patched. Others are harder to get many–even “smart” users–to adopt.
Use secure passwords and change them on a regular basis. Sure, remembering a 16 to 64 character string of semi-randomized characters is hard for some folks, and typing them in all the time is cumbersome, but there are good utilities to save them in encrypted form and enter them given one master password. The better ones cost money, though, and some otherwise smart folks are too cheap to cough up for them.
And then there are the folks who unthinkingly simply CLICK through the security prompts in Windows Vista/7. *sigh* A Very Good Habit to develop is to STOP THAT!!! *heh*
View all emails in plain text mode. Seriously. Hard to get folks to do, but nowadays it’s just the smart thing to do.
NEVER install ANY application from ANYWHERE without FIRST manually scanning it with a well-respected, up-to-date anti-malware. No, never. Period. Is this simply paranoia? Probably, but I’ve not infected any of my own systems, yet, going all the way back to the DOS “stone age”. Have I been sent infected files by smart people? Yes. Even from some Very, Very Smart People. Installed them (or in any way let them be close to executed)? No.
Good hardware/software firewalls (on devices protected with strong passwords and data encryption), Regular Backups (!!!) and good general security habits are still just about all one needs, IMO, to be pretty darned safe. Is there room for improvement in security softwares and the Windows OS? Yes, and there always will be. Is the even more room for improvement in users’ habits? Yes. Always will be. Both of those things keep my pockets jingling. 🙂