I am looking for anti-virus and firewall software for a fresh XP install, and after reading this thread, I was wondering whether to go for separate solutions consisting of Avast or NOD32 anti-virus and Zone Alarm firewall or a combined security suite such as the Zone Alarm Internet security suite?

I realise the combined product costs money vs the 2 free examples above, I guess what I am asking is if anyone knows how good the Zone Alarm anti-virus product is compared to a dedicated virus scanner and if the better firewall features (relative to the free firewall) are worth getting and if it is worth the money?

Thanks!

I personally prefer individual components because I think (not sure if it is true or not) that I can swap out the components as needed for better products or upgrade them individually. This is probably just my prior experience with "suite" software being a combination of more "average" packages.

I am kind of curious to read the discussion about this one myself...

I'm curious what this thread will reveal, too!
I'm not an expert of this stuff by any means. In fact, I probably have more questions than answers. So, please correct me where I'm wrong or make suggestions where I may have weaknesses in my strategies.

As I see it, there are two sources of attack- outside and inside.
I think the simplest solution for protection against an outside attack is a hardware firewall- like a network router. Even if you have only one machine to connect up, the $40 (for a cheap one) is money well spent. (empeggers can then network the empeg while at home, too!)
What I call an 'inside' attack is the result of poor internet choices- malware installed by a click on the wrong website or released via email attachments, etc.
For me, the first line of defense is to be wary- and aware- of what I'm clicking on.
The second line of defense is anti-virus software. I'm currently using AVG on one machine and AntiVir on another. They haven't sounded any alarms in over a year of use, so I think I'm doing well with my first line of defense. They are easy to use and can be set up to be quite unintrusive.
I tried ZoneAlarm years ago, but it was not easy to distinguish one process from another; not easy to know you're making a good decision on allowing a certain process to communicate. It was frustrating and disheartening... and never revealed any issues.

I occasionally run AdAware and Spybot-Search and Destroy.
I occasionally look at the processes running in the background and google the names that I'm not familiar with.

I'm sure my strategy is full of holes, but my machines are running well.
I'm looking forward to reading about the other empeggers' protection schemes!

While I'm neither constantly running pirated software I've downloaded nor ever running IE, Outlook, or Office (using Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice.org instead), I've had zero problems with just running AVG's free anti-virus and having a hardware firewall and every once in a while run AdAware and SpyBot. I never actually get any viruses or spyware, so I could probably do without AVG and AdAware/SpyBot, but gives me a small sense of security.

I've a bias against suites. They tend to hook into the OS (windows) so deeply that if it doesn't break something (Symantec) it sure slows it down (Mcafee).

I use NOD32 -- AVG didn't work very well for me -- and a hardware firewall. Most home hardware firewalls (and Windows XP's built-in firewall) don't do egress filtering (checking that nothing initiates a dodgy outbound connection). So, if you're concerned about that, something like ZoneAlarm might make you feel safer.

I am extremely careful what I click on, and I run my user account without admin privileges (which is why AVG didn't work for me). So I'm not so concerned about the worst kinds of malware, because they tend to need admin rights to do anything really bad.

Not the official opionion of my firm or security practice, but I would ALWAYS use individual products. For home use at the moment, the free options already mentioned should be happily up to the job. My windows box (yeah, I know - but some games...etc) with AVG and ZA seems perfectly fine, although I would never use IE, and have the useful security extensions mentioned in the firefox thread.

Even for corporate use, I have never encountered a single vendor solution I would rate anywhere near the security gained from individual best-of-breed or best-fit-for-purpose solutions.

ymmv

Here's another thumbs-up from a NOD32 user - it's very fast and there's no apparent limit to the AV signature update frequency (unlike Symantec's) either.

For spyware I too use AdAware and Spybot. While scanning customer's machines I sometimes use XoftSpy (subscription required) and, depending upon the direction of the wind, that catches important stuff that AdAware and Spybot misses - I think it's purely down to how often the signatures are updated.

One invaluable tool for checking running processes can be found at www.hijackthis.de - download and run the 'passive' checking tool and paste the results into the web form for an analysis.

Actually, that's a good point - it was always the case that corporates had firewalls, but few home users had them due to cost. Now you can pick up an old 486 PC for free and run a prefectly servicable firewall on it. Although having a dedicated firewall is not a silver bullet, it will really help and is very easy. There are free fw installs for download, some of which do not even need hard drives (tiny firewall)

Right, I tried Avast! free edition but I couldn't stand the stupid interface (why is it that anti-virus vendors seem to think that their programs have to have their own interfaces?) so I downloaded NOD32 and was pleased to see an option for a standard Windows interface so NOD32 will do for me even though I will have to pay for it.

I will give the free Zone Alarm firewall a go, since I haven't got around to buying a WRT54GL yet, but I wish that you could get the advanced firewall without the other stuff.

A standard home internet router is a firewall. Hardly expensive.

Good point. Most of those supplied by your ISP directly are not really routers. Specifically, it's the one-to-many NAT (network address translation) that makes it useful as a firewall. If you can hook up multiple computers, you are most likely safe-ish.

agreed - they are cheap, but not exactly very useful. I have one in the chain, but wouldn't want to rely on it as it does almost no packet inspection.

I've had zero problems with just running AVG's free anti-virus and having a hardware firewall and every once in a while run AdAware and SpyBot.

Uhhh.... yeah. What he said.

tanstaafl.

I run NOD32 and love it. I get multiple definition updates a day. and catches virus very fast. Im thinking of trying to see if I can get work to switch from Mcaffee to NOD32.. As for Firewall I run Tiny Personal Firewall.. I switched to that a few years ago from Blackice i think it was and/or Zonealarm. those just had too much crap in em..As far as I can tell Ive had no problems with Tiny.. but then again I dont pay that much attention to it..I just tell it yes let what I want through and deny everything else.. This combo I install on every one of my pcs..