The license should automatically update 4 weeks before the Expiry Date.

Yo everyone-

Many thanks for all the props and advise-

Installed comodo firewall pro (free!!!) and -boyhowdy - is that some powerful voodoo-eh!!

Thanks again-

Hi! What's your opinion of ZoneAlarm Internet Security? I know it's firewall is very good, but I don't know how good is its antivirus and antispyware capability. And I don't see it is being reviewed in AV-Comparatives.

Yo toaddub-

Try the AVIRA antivirus and Comodo firewall pro combo - it's about $59.95 cheaper than zone alarm and as good or better-eh!!

Don't know where you got that price but you can get Avira A/V PE and Comodo FW for free??? I haven't test ZA with Comodo FW but I use ZA pro currently and have Spybot and Avira PE A/V....Why pay for free versions of Avira and Comodo which can be downloaded for free from their site when they do have free version for use individual users??? And those have worked well for me....

AV-Comparatives has a set criteria, Unfortunately ZoneAlarm doesn't meet the criteria. Just remember that there is no perfect Anti-Virus, and there never will be. You will want to pick something that has a high detection rate and uses little resources and always check now and again with alternative means.

Some more comparisons.

Yo coolcolors-

If you had read earlier posts - you would have seen that I am using the free versions of AVIRA, Comodo, ThreatFire and SpyBot - my bad I guess for not restating that fact-eh

(and Zone Alarm costs $59.95)

You may wish to reconsider running a software firewall. NAT routers are effective at keeping out unsolicited incoming threats, but they offer almost no protection against something nasty that has found it's way onto your computer by whatever means (and could be doing anything from sending out your credit card details to participating in a botnet). True your anti-virus software probably should have detected this malicious program but no anti-virus is perfect and there is always a gap between something new being released into the wild and your chosen anti-virus company producing a signature for it. If you have a decent software firewall then you can control which software can have access to the internet and your network, so at least a malicious program can't do too much harm. And you can also use it to stop some software that you want to use from phoning home behind you back all the time.

I must confess that I have never had a problem with viruses etc. even though I avoided using anti-virus software until November 2001 and had never used a firewall until April 2004 (when I switched from dial up to ADSL). Instead I just relied on being careful. But I am not convinced that this is enough these days.

yeah it seems like over kill with a hardware and s/w firewall but i use both. I like to see when apps are wanting an internez connection just to keep them honest

Thanks for that List, I see My Bitdefender is not to Bad then

Like I said in another thread, I have a Cisco Router and they tell you in their setup manual not to run a software firewall with it, they conflict and you may have to reset the router on a continuous basis.

I have a Linksys WRT54G v2.0 (made by Cisco Systems) that's 4 years old or so and the only problem i have had is my operator error.

I have run McAfee's and CA's firewall and anti-virus with my Linksys firewall the whole time and not one problem.

But i'm sure others have had problems. I'm not doubting that.

Your welcome.

I have the same router as well but v8, with ZoneAlarm Internet Security running. Most of the time there's no problem, but a few times I can't access the internet after I bring the PC out of standby. I tried various ways to restore the connection but to no avail nothing seems to work until I just leave it alone and go somewhere and when I come back, it seems to resolve the connection itself. By various ways, I mean 1) first do the Repair the connection, 2) do the ipconfig /renew, 3) disable the network device then enable it, 4) system restore, 5) reboot, 6) reset the router, 7) cannot get to the router's setup page b/c its local IP address is not recognized.

I even called tech support for internet provider and they said that my network card is fried and that I need to get a new one. Yeah right.....

I'd really like to know in situation like this, what is the proper step to get it working rather than just wait for the miracle.

I will try the Comodo and Avira on one of my very old systems P4 1.8 512MB RAM and see how the resource hog is, because ZA seems to slow everything down when it's doing the update or the weekly scan.

I never use Standby.........maybe that is it?

I leave my pc on for days with no Hibernate or Standby. I do turn off my LCD monitor at night.

Like i said i have no problems whatsoever. XP Pro SP2+. Cable static IP addy.

My pc is hardwired to one of the 4 ports and my older build is hardwired to one of the ports on the router.

No problems with either pc using same apps and router.

Hi
I am not sure if you should trust any ONE product when it comes to PC security.
As far as free goes. Avira combined with Comodo Pro takes some beating.
I'd still use other stuff like Spybot & CCleaner, along with any thing else that happens to be flavour of the month.

have any of you guys thought about how much time and money we spend on extra software/hardware on just being safe and use our computers lol kind of sad huh haha

I think that a modern software firewall should be regarded as performing a different function to the hardware firewall in a router, and it would be irresponsible of any manufacturer to suggest that the firewall in their £50 router does everything you need.

An incoming only firewall like Windows XP's could be regarded as unnesscesary if you also have a router firewall. But a good software firewall also controls outgoing access to the internet (& your own network). In addition many modern software firewalls can even control which programs are allowed to run on your computer.

The firewall in a router is very limited. The use of NAT by the router is very effective at keeping unsolicited incoming threats out as the outside world can only see the router (assuming that no ports are being forwarded). Unsolicited incoming traffic cannot be forwarded to a computer on the internal network as the router does not know which computer to send it to. Unless of course port forwarding has been set up, then the router knows that traffic arriving on port X is to be forwarded to computer Y even is computer Y has not requested it. Then the firewall on most routers uses Stateful Packet Inspection to decide if incoming packets are a legitimate reply to an outgoing request made by a computer on the internal network, discarding any other packets. But all this is only protection against unsolicited incoming threats, such as someone looking to use exploitable bug in the operating system or browser.

Most malicious software (viruses etc.) these days is written for criminal gain of one sort of another, so it is likely that it will be trying to send some data from your computer. This could be a keylogger trying to capture your bank account password and send it back home to then be used to empty your bank account, or it could be something else entirely different such as using your computer to participate in a Denial of Service attack.

The outbound protection offered by a router firewall is virtually non existant. You may be able to close specific ports to outbound traffic, but that's no good if the malicious software just uses the same port as HTTP, FTP etc.

So I think that having a firewall that controls outgoing traffic is essential. Yes you've got your anti-virus software catch these things but do the sums - the best software in the test scored 99.8%, but that leaves 33,667 threats that it didn't catch!

Anyone using EST Smart Security Suite.

Seems to be very easy on resources and runs quitely in the background.

The security software industry loves to prey on our paranoia. But do we need everything that it tries to sell us? Surely anti-virus and a two-way firewall should be enough? (Okay I'll admit that you might want anti-spam as well but it is strictly optional)

Do we need anti-spyware or anti-rootkit? Personally I think that anti-virus software should be catching these things anyway (I'm not saying that it does at the moment but it should). And as for the extra intrusion detection and anti-hack components of some security suites, well those are definitely the responsibility of a decent firewall.

Fortunately some of the best software is free anyway. For the record I use AVG Free Anti Virus (although Avira looks good) and Comodo Personal Firewall (with Defense+ turned off). My computer is now getting on a bit and I would rather is was using it's resources to process my photos a bit faster.

Of course two of the best things that you can do to improve your security are free and don't slow down your computer at all.
1) The human factor - just be sensible/suspicious and think before acting. Although these days this is no longer enough, the most vulnerable component will always be the person operating the computer.
2) Don't run your operating system with full administrative privileges all the time. If you use a limited account in Windows then you can't install any new software, so nothing nasty can be installed when you absent mindedly open that e-mail attachment (in theory at least).