Category Archives: Security

Security

Kaspersky Recommendation Over Norton Antivirus

Once upon a time, Norton Anti-virus reigned supreme in the anti-virus world. Fast, easy to install, small footprint. Unfortunately, that was in the year 2000.

Since then Norton has become the exact opposite of all that. Now it’s slow, often difficult to install — and especially uninstall — without side effects, and the program has far surpassed the level of bloatware.

To top it all off, Norton appears to miss a LOT of viruses and is very slow to update. Poor Peter Norton’s legacy has befallen the bureacracy of large scale companies.

Personally, I am recommending a couple of other alternatives to Norton.

For free antivirus software the last holdout seems to be avast. http://www.avast.com. It catches a reasonable amount of viruses, updates fairly often, has a relatively small footprint, and the price is right.

For paid antivirus I feel Kaspersky is now king of the hill. It consistently ranks high in the best antivirus detection as well as update speed tests.

Now if you currently have Norton (or McAfee for that matter) I would continue to use it as long as you’re happy with the results. However, if you find that your computer is running particulary slow when you check your Outlook email or if you are still getting a fair share of viruses on your system, then consider switching over to Kaspersky http://www.kaspersky.com once your current subscription expires.

Cybertech Bulletin Links

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/ – This is the US Department of Homeland Security’s cyber defense site. Good to see the latest cyber tech alerts.

http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/ – Another good site that posts the latest computer vulnerabilities and exploits.

http://explabs.blogspot.com/ – Exploit Prevention Labs has some good information on the latest exploits and how they are being used.

Security Links

A few of my favorite security links:

www.insecure.org has all kinds of utilities for testing your network security.

www.securityfocus.com has the latest and greatest news on the security homefront. I’d like to try and list their RSS feed here someday.

www.grc.com is from the guru who brought us SpinRite oh-so-many years ago. You computer old-timers know about this product. Steve Gibson’s site has some pretty cool utilities and you can always try his Shields-Up test on your PC to see if you have any leaks.

www.dnsstuff.com allows you to look up all kinds of DNS info.