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Security Recommendations

According to a recent article, there are 5 million new threats in the third quarter of 2009. That number surely isn't going to decrease over the next few years either. Online vulnerabilities are significantly increasing and my bet is that 9 out 10 computers in the United States are infected with some sort of malware. It still amazes me that many computer users, people like you, still don't grasp the importance of being protected and staying safe online. In their mind, computers are just a thing, a toy if you will, that you can just turn off any day and live without. How wrong they are.

Let's look at some common misconceptions and the reasoning of why you shouldn't "waste" money on purchasing adequate security software and hardware:

"I don't have anything of importance on my computer, so if someone breaks in and sees or takes my data, it doesn't really bother me."

What if someone or something breaks in, performs malicious activities, and somewhere along the line your computer becomes entirely corrupted that it won't boot anymore? They didn't take any of your data, actually, they couldn't care less about your data, but when your computer gets infected and is rendered inoperable and you LOST all of your data including pictures, music, videos, bookmarks, everything, you are telling me that you wouldn't care? You probably don't have a recent backup of everything either.

"They can't get me because I don't go online very often."

You are online 24/7 even if you don't open your browser such as Internet Explorer or Firefox. If your computer is off, yes, it will be safe, but unless you UNPLUG your modem, your modem is online 24/7 and it WILL get infected with something within let's say a day of being online. The modem will be infected and it waits for you to turn on your computer and then, your computer is infected rather instantly unless you have a software firewall or another hardware firewall in between.

"I have a free antivirus, antispyware, and firewall."

At least you have something, however not everything that's free is good and in the same way, not everything that costs a lot of money is good. McAfee for example costs money but it's crap. AVG for example is free but it's crap. Don't just download whatever is the most downloaded. You should know that the majority is always wrong. Go with software and hardware that WORKS, not because you don't want to spend $40 a year. That's a small price considering if your computer dies it will cost a LOT more to get it fixed.

You probably noticed that I have some strong opinions and what's good and what's not. Sure I could list all my sources of why I think what I think, but this is not a research paper and I don't have any intention to defend my ideas. I know what I know. I do my own research and I suggest you do the same. I spend a lot of time researching hardware and software that will provide adequate protection. This page's purpose is to give you a starting point in your research. I give you what I currently think is the best. This list will be revised as needed and kept up to date. You should come back here to see what I think and then perform your own research to make the ultimate purchasing decision that will keep you safe.

Here is the master list of what I think you should be running. In each category I rank what I think is the best and which ones are are closeley followed. Please only pick one from each category, don't install ALL of them unless you are an expert in configuring everything to work well together. Here we go:

Software Firewall

Software Antivirus and Antispyware

List last updated 10/07/2009.