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Revealed: the solution to PC security

December 18, 2007

Yes, I inherited the PC-security beat by failing at ‘last one out of the office’, but malware writers do get the girls. And we cover the interesting events. (By ‘interesting’ I mean buttock-clenchingly frightening, of course.)

Recently a tiny software firm called Microsoft spent a few hours showing me how vulnerable I am to online attack. Sobering stuff, but more scary was the ‘solution’ - or, rather, the plethora of solutions - on offer. Microsoft was keen to point out that security needn’t be expensive, and tech-savvy users can find the tools required without spending a bean.

Get the latest PC security news, reviews and tips & tricks at Security Advisor.

But people who know about PCs do tend to attempt to secure theirs. Trouble is, what’s the best way of doing so? The Get Safe Online campaign says all PC users should run antispyware, antivirus and a firewall. But in the latter part of 2007 I met tens of security vendors pushing their latest wares. They all had different approaches - and some are more succesful than others.

‘Signature-based checking is no defence against zero-day attacks,’ say the behavioural analysists. ‘Consider the false positives,’ respond the traditionalists - ‘and anyway, our database is better than yours.’

Even if you’re paid to know about this stuff, it’s confusing. And if your experience of ‘security’ is one of being upsold during your biannual PC-shopping trip, you’ll probably plump for whatever the 16-year-old shop assistant/pop-idol auditionee behind the counter recommends. You’ll pay over the odds for features you may not need, and you mightn’t realise that when the licence expires your ‘security suite’ is worse than useless.

Web security is too important to leave to wage-slave’s bonus schemes. So perhaps its time we had a government-sponsored system of accreditation for security software, complete with symbols that make it clear which tools we all need. But then, getting the government further involved in IT may be something less than a bright idea.

Posted by: Matt Egan

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Comments

Posted by The Sinking of HMS MS on December 18, 2007 :

When the lunatics offer you an seriously over priced luxury car, with hyped-up security, they always ignore the simple fact that a brick will easily smash through the windows.

The very same can be said of every Microsoft operating system, to date.
If the designer naked kings had built in a separate and secure net surfing mode, which was insulatated from the core of the operating system, then we would'nt find that the air-bag was driving the car.

In other words, give us the $10 rapid re-inflatable OS on a $100 surfing laptop instead of the current flaccid Vista or XP expensive sad-ware.

PC Advisor staff
Blogger Daily news, views and thoughts from the PC Advisor staff as they put together the magazine. Collectively the PC Advisor team has over 100 years of computing experience, so as you'll imagine they're never short of an opinion or two.
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