After experimenting with various anti-virus and firewall software lately, I’ve settled on using Comodo Internet Security for my home office network for now.
This all started when I actually caught a virus on my PC. I never did find out exactly what it was or where it came from, but I had numerous programs that would just suddenly stop receiving keystrokes for a moment or two and then start receiving them again even after I had killed every possible process on the computer to make sure it just wasn’t something losing focus. Since I type very fast, this was very noticeable to me, though it might have been undetected among non-touch typists. There were other odd things too, but I never really could track them down.
The part that was scary was that my anti-virus didn’t catch it. I ran an extra malware scanner and it picked up a few things, but nothing that seemed very serious.
In the end, I decided that while anti-virus protection is probably enough for most users, the PCs in my home office are incredibly valuable to me. Between client lists, emails, online banking for both my and my business, and numerous documents and memos that would be considered “sensitive”, my livelihood is really at stake on my computer.
Since I know that I will never win the battle versus the hackers who might someone get access to my computer, I figured that what I needed was a way to not only scan my computer, but to keep extra programs out and, in the unfortunate even that they ever got in, to keep the data that they might be trying to steal from leaving my PC.
I have a wireless router that acts as the first level firewall, but I run numerous programs to allow for VPN access to client networks, email clients, occasional Bittorrent, and so on, so there are ways in for the truly determined.
I tried a recommended freeware product since tax season was coming and I knew that I could have my pick of security software for free when I buy my copy of TurboTax. But, when I installed it on our older laptops (we still have some Dell Inspirons with just 512 MB of RAM running XP) it bogged them down something terrible.
That became test number one. If it couldn’t run on a 4-year old Dell laptop with 512MB of RAM then I eliminated it as a resource hog. Comodo seems to be doing find so far, so I’m going with it until further notice.
So, I’ll be posting updates and tips and tricks on how to use Comodo in the coming days as I start to iron out just how I want to have it work.
Hopefully, this will provide me better security and performance and maybe allow me to get a better understanding of network and PC security at the same time.