Anti Virus / Firewall good combos?

Whats a good anti virus / firewall?

I notice most firewalls you use will turn windows firewall off, so which ones are as good as windows firewall?

Whats better, comodo firewall and ME together? or maybe comodo bundled with antivirus? or comodo firewall with eset or avast? any thoughts here?

Paranoia when comes to keeping computer safe :) from everything I worry about being hacked

what combos do you guys use? I use ONLINE armor and ME right now but online armor seems to be a little complicated and I wonder how well it really works though I like the anti keylogger... I just don't seem to know how to use it all that well so I wonder if its under used plus it turns off windows firewall and conflicts with lots of programs so I wonder if comodo would be better.

what combos works well for you guys

If y'all can stand one more post. :)

IMHO and FWIW, outbound firewalls have several shortcomings, both technical and conceptual:

•It's too late. If an outbound firewall detects something that is, in fact, malicious in nature it's because your machine is already infected. Something in your inbound defense failed and your machine has acquired some form of malware. Yes, I suppose it would be nice to know your machine is infected, but in fact your inbound defenses (firewall and anti-malware suites) should have already either prevented or detected the problem. With adequate inbound protection, an outbound firewall is redundant. And that's why there are so many free on-demand scanners to supplement the primary anti-malware suite.

•It's intrusive. Outbound firewalls require additional resources to do their job. OK, with today's faster CPUs, increased RAM, larger disk space, etc this may be a moot issue. But on a home or office machine a router will give you the inbound protection you need without taking up additional resources on your machine. And if inbound threats are eliminated, outbound protection isn't needed.

•It's frequently wrong. One of the very common complaints about outbound firewalls are warning messages that are either incomprehensible, overly frequent, or don't give the average user enough information to make an informed decision. Frequently, they'll simply report a connection attempt to or from an IP address with little or no additional information. I've also seen warnings from totally legitimate processes for things like software updates or syncing the current time and date. With too many errors, indecipherable messages or false positives, it's like the boy who cried wolf too many times. People tend to ignore the warnings after a while, rendering the outbound firewall ineffective.

Is there a case for an outgoing firewall? Many people may say absolutely, they add a lot of value and that my thoughts are off target or over-stated. But I remain of the opinion that if an outgoing firewall is actually adding value it's because the incoming protection failed. If people want to focus additional energy and resources at becoming more secure, I'd much rather see them focus on preventative solutions rather than solutions that only kick in after it's too late.

Let the flaming begin.

marsmimar said:

If y'all can stand one more post. :)

IMHO and FWIW, outbound firewalls have several shortcomings, both technical and conceptual:

•It's too late. If an outbound firewall detects something that is, in fact, malicious in nature it's because your machine is already infected. Something in your inbound defense failed and your machine has acquired some form of malware. Yes, I suppose it would be nice to know your machine is infected, but in fact your inbound defenses (firewall and anti-malware suites) should have already either prevented or detected the problem. With adequate inbound protection, an outbound firewall is redundant. And that's why there are so many free on-demand scanners to supplement the primary anti-malware suite.

•It's intrusive. Outbound firewalls require additional resources to do their job. OK, with today's faster CPUs, increased RAM, larger disk space, etc this may be a moot issue. But on a home or office machine a router will give you the inbound protection you need without taking up additional resources on your machine. And if inbound threats are eliminated, outbound protection isn't needed.

•It's frequently wrong. One of the very common complaints about outbound firewalls are warning messages that are either incomprehensible, overly frequent, or don't give the average user enough information to make an informed decision. Frequently, they'll simply report a connection attempt to or from an IP address with little or no additional information. I've also seen warnings from totally legitimate processes for things like software updates or syncing the current time and date. With too many errors, indecipherable messages or false positives, it's like the boy who cried wolf too many times. People tend to ignore the warnings after a while, rendering the outbound firewall ineffective.

Is there a case for an outgoing firewall? Many people may say absolutely, they add a lot of value and that my thoughts are off target or over-stated. But I remain of the opinion that if an outgoing firewall is actually adding value it's because the incoming protection failed. If people want to focus additional energy and resources at becoming more secure, I'd much rather see them focus on preventative solutions rather than solutions that only kick in after it's too late.

Let the flaming begin.

Interesting reasoning!! Never though of the outbound firewall that way, and I must admit that it's a very good analysis, I particularly agree with the "if you have good inbound protection, outbound becomes redundant at some point.

I would like however to add something "in defense" of the outbound thing. Having such a redundant protection is not too bad anyway, in fact it follows the principle of "layered defense", so that, if one thing fails, the second can act. Admit it, no antivirus, no matter how good it is, is perfect, users are often easily lured into malware and zero-day menaces appear every time. Against all those things, a second layer of protection is always a good thing and can prevent some flaws in the first line too.

Users are generally not too much tech-savvy in average, and most often don't understand the firewalls popups, I agree. But in those cases, a default config of preventing but no showing may help against some viruses and spyware.

And also, there are always programs that have a good purpose, but under the covers try to send some data or to download something they should not or isn't expected. An outbound firewall helps minimizing those. A great example I can think of is the MS Office suite, none of its programs (except Outlook) has a reason to ever connect to internet, nevertheless with their "customer experience program" they send data about what you do without clearly notifying in some cases (I know it can be disabled, but not all people is aware of it). An outbound firewall will block it if properly configured to.

xxsicknessxx said:

Whats a good anti virus / firewall?

I notice most firewalls you use will turn windows firewall off, so which ones are as good as windows firewall?

Whats better, comodo firewall and ME together? or maybe comodo bundled with antivirus? or comodo firewall with eset or avast? any thoughts here?

Paranoia when comes to keeping computer safe :) from everything I worry about being hacked

Sandboxie is your friend