How many antivirii's can you install?

Completely agree with mohaughn and nihil on this.
And I completely disagree with JP as well.

Regardless of whether you are using dial up or a broadband connection, there is absolutely no harm in running a software firewall and AV scanner on your desktops.
IMHO running more than one software firewall or AV scanner is not a good idea, however.

For a start this will detect unusual outbound activity from the desktop, due to something that snuck through earlier, and infected the PC.
And JP is completely wrong in suggesting that these use significant resources (CPU, memory etc.) nowadays, given the hardware specs of most PCs.

As another point, for home users here in the UK, I always recommend they install a software firewall & an AV scanner.
The vast majority are using Win98 over a dial up connection - no JP, most people here, like the rest of the world do not have broadband or a router ....

With a router it do serves as an firewall protecting the workstation but a software firewall enables a user to know what program accessing the internet by monitoring the outgoing connection, if any suspicious programs(trojan horse, etc) fail to be detected by the antivirus, it will alert the user of all outgoing connections make by the program.

Exactly the point I was trying to make.

Any software firewall would pick up on most of the recent worms, if they had got past whatever other defences you had in place.
Always best to have more than one layer of security, in case your main layer fails.
Some AV scanners also include some of the items mentioned by nihil, such as scanning for suspicious scripts, and alerting you to strange outgoing email activity from a PC.

The combination of these two makes it extremely difficult for a PC to be hijacked without you being aware of it.

Neither Antivirus's or Firewall's are for client side operation. ALL filtering and protection should be done on the server side or on another dedicated box. There should not be software firewalls on every computer in the network and antivirus engines should not be on every local computer. There should be two hardware firewalls, one for the dmz one for the lan, and one antivirus web proxy box. That's it. That is all that you need and you will be plenty secure enough with that running. You will not lose years of cpu cycles to worthless 'home-user' firewalls such as zone alarm and black ice, and to worthless antivirus engines such as norton and mcafee.

So to answer your question, on my work network of three domains and ~400 computers, I run a total of 1 antivirus program on 1 machine and another two firewall boxes that just use iptables.

On my home network of ~10 computers I run 1 iptables firewall machine and 0 antivirus engines.

I can't believe people are still posting replys to this thread!!! :cool:

Quote:

---

On my home network of ~10 computers I run 1 iptables firewall machine and 0 antivirus engines.

---

Thats great for a network, but primarily we were discussing a standalone desktop or at the most 2-3 computers sharing an internet connection, and not networked together.
In my understanding anyway.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by darkes
I completely disagree with JP as well.

---

You can disagree with me all that you want, but I'm right. :booty:

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by darkes
For a start this will detect unusual outbound activity from the desktop

---

Hardware firewalls do this too. We call them "reverse reflexive access lists". If you're like "most of the people" in the UK as you mention below, and don't have a router or a hardware firewall, or have never used one, and are running windows 98, you would, of course, not know this. Which is a perfect reason why you shouldn't be giving people advice.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by darkes
And JP is completely wrong in suggesting that these use significant resources (CPU, memory etc.) nowadays, given the hardware specs of most PCs.

---

No, sorry, I'm right on this one too. I love when people state opinions like they're facts, especially when they have no clue wtf they're talking about. :thumbsup:

Actually benchmarking of systems by those in the industry that do that sort of thing tells the true story. (What's this, benchmarks? You mean JP doesn't just pull all of the advice that he gives out of his ass, and actually bases them on knowledge he garners from keeping track of the industry?) Yes, BENCHMARKS.

Fact!: AntiVirus Software can use from 3% - 19% of your system resources while "auto-protecting" your computer from viruses. (and some of the people in this thread advised installing 2 of them, haha)

Fact!: Software Firewalls for the desktop pc (such as Norton or Mcafee or Zonelabs), can use from 5% - 17% of your system resources, and effect download speeds by over 10%.

Total hit to your system? Between 8% and 36% of your system resources.
[/B][/QUOTE]

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by darkes

no JP, most people here, like the rest of the world do not have broadband or a router ....

---

Just because the UK is behind the 8 ball when it comes to broadband, don't use that as a yard stick to measure people "in the rest of the world". As a matter of fact, the UK is WAY behind most of the developed world in this regard. Percentage of growth of new broadband lines in the UK for 2003 was behind countries like China, Italy, and even Venezuela for cripe sake! You did managed to beat out Lithuania though. Congrats!

Does everyone have broadband yet? No. Did I give advice in this thread for those that don't have it? Yes. Is the "age of the dial-up" dying, and VERY QUICKLY being replaced by broadband? Yes.

As for most people in the UK still using windows 98. I have no idea how true that is, and I suspect that you don't either.

mohaughn:

I have no gripes with ICF, and it really wasn't what people were bringing up in this thread, which is why I never really addressed it specifically. It's built into the architecture of the OS, and not layered into it, so it doesn't hold true to most of the issues that I've been discussing about "software firewalls".

Another thing that no one has brought up, which kind of surprised me, is a very fundamental of security: The more software you install, the more vulnerability you're opening yourself up to. Each application brings with it baggage, including those designed to bolster security. A perfect example: http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/se...le.php/3354091

I'm loving this argument. People learn a lot more if they start an argument (peaceful one for that matter)

Here are some numbers:

.Broadband Penetration in Select Countries.
Country or Region
Broadband Subscribers
Data Source
and Date

Australia
1,000,000
N/NR - May/2003

Austria
540,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Belgium
869,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Canada
3,600,000
ITU - Dec/2002

China
17,400,000
CNNIC - Dec/2003

Denmark
462,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Finland
274,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Hong Kong
989,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Hungary
260,000
KSH - Dec/2003

Iceland
25,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Japan
7,806,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Korea
10,128,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Netherlands
1,060,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Singapore
392,000
IWS - Dec/2003

Sweden
693,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Switzerland
455,000
ITU - Dec/2002

Taiwan
3,000,000
T.T. - Dec/2003

United Kingdom
3,200,000
Oftel - Jan/2004

U.S.A.
26,200,000
Y.G. - Aug/2003

Sources: (1) International Telecommunications Union (ITU),
(2) CNNIC, (3) Taipei Times, (4) Ofcom, (5) Yankee Group,
(6) Nielsen//NetRatings, (6) KSH .

Quote:

---

Some 63.8 million people around the world are now connected to the Internet via DSL, reports DSL Forum, based in Fremont, Calif., a consortium of companies promoting use of the standard. The figures show that DSL attracted 28 million new subscribers during 2003.

---

Here u go gentlemen: http://www.internetworldstats.com/articles/art030.htm

From the college student perspective-

When I fixed blaster and sasser, people asked me how they got them. I said it's because they didn't update windows. So I would turn on auto-update for their AV(if they had it) and windows. Problem is, I'm not willing to keep track of all the software they use to make sure its updated and configured to update. In this case, a firewall is necessary to protect what could possibly exploit unupdated software. I'm not going to tell them they need to pay 100 bucks for a hardware firewall when I can have them install a free software firewall and configure it to update itself and work in the background. If I worked for Best Buy, hell yeah I'd try and sell them some stuff. But people don't like spend money on things they don't understand. Besides, we can't have routers in our dorms because we are only supposed to have 1 box per student. The school doesn't offer any firewall beyond our rooms (otherwise we wouldn't have been effected by sasser). Software is the only option for me.

As for resources, I like to keep things running smooth, but I only notice a difference when I'm rendering. Most people don't render, but most people don't run 2.0+ ghz either.

btw-
Hardware firewalls get exploited too.

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by JP

Hardware firewalls do this too. We call them "reverse reflexive access lists". If you're like "most of the people" in the UK as you mention below, and don't have a router or a hardware firewall, or have never used one, and are running windows 98, you would, of course, not know this. Which is a perfect reason why you shouldn't be giving people advice.

No, sorry, I'm right on this one too. I love when people state opinions like they're facts, especially when they have no clue wtf they're talking about. :thumbsup:

Actually benchmarking of systems by those in the industry that do that sort of thing tells the true story. (What's this, benchmarks? You mean JP doesn't just pull all of the advice that he gives out of his ass, and actually bases them on knowledge he garners from keeping track of the industry?) Yes, BENCHMARKS.

Fact!: AntiVirus Software can use from 3% - 19% of your system resources while "auto-protecting" your computer from viruses. (and some of the people in this thread advised installing 2 of them, haha)

Fact!: Software Firewalls for the desktop pc (such as Norton or Mcafee or Zonelabs), can use from 5% - 17% of your system resources, and effect download speeds by over 10%.

Total hit to your system? Between 8% and 36% of your system resources.
Just because the UK is behind the 8 ball when it comes to broadband, don't use that as a yard stick to measure people "in the rest of the world". As a matter of fact, the UK is WAY behind most of the developed world in this regard. Percentage of growth of new broadband lines in the UK for 2003 was behind countries like China, Italy, and even Venezuela for cripe sake! You did managed to beat out Lithuania though. Congrats!

As for most people in the UK still using windows 98. I have no idea how true that is, and I suspect that you don't either.

---

To reply to some of your points.
wtf is a DMZ hardware firewall worth when someone has just connected an infected portable PC to your internal network?

And, I have worked in this industry for more than 20 years, so I do have some idea what I am talking about ...

I haven't a clue what benchmarks you are using, but the ones I have run show the performance hit at less than 1%, and no affect on download times.

Win98 for home users is a bit of a red herring, as I agree that is a different matter.
btw, perhaps you haven't looked at the MS figures that show Win98 is the most widely used version of Windows across the world.

And, no I don't use Win98 in either a work or home environment ...

I must say, I find your attitude very condescending & insulting, as you are making one hell of a lot of assumptions - like I don't understand the difference between Win98 & the WinNT/XP line and what you should do to harden the system in a work environment - which, yes, does include software firewalls.

I was expecting more from you .....

In return can I say that IMHO you don't know wtf you are talking about either.
Expecting loads of negs for this comment ...