Ultimate Home Security Suites
I see next month PC Live will be publishing a feature called ‘Ultimate Home Security Suites’. Unfortunately I think that it will be wholly focussed on DPIU software. That is, applications one Downloads, Purchases, Installs and Updates.
These applications are acceptable at best in a corporate environment, where updates can be pushed by the IT department, but the majority of home users don’t have the time or expertise to figure out which application to use for security. And although most applications provide an ‘auto update’ feature - many still require user confirmation or reboot permission, and because home users use their machines less frequently, they are at risk while all the updates are being downloaded.
The solution of course is SIMPLE! Okay … that’s not entirely true … but a huge portion of the solution can be made less reliant on the user. For example, hosted spam and virus filtering will prevant any viruses coming to your computer through email. Admittedly there’s still the Windows Update and Firewall issue, but by securing your email remotely, one of the major security gaps will have been plugged.
Why is online better? 2 reasons. Firstly, it’s on-line - as in, not on your computer - so viruses never actually reach your machine to have to be detected and removed (presuming your virus scanner catches them). Secondly the update process is no longer the end-users burden, as the on-line service will always have the most up-to-date spam list and virus definitions - making it more accurate.
June 19th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
So Ed, if using a hosted email service such as yours, will reduce my exposure to viruses and other dodgy programs - which all sounds great for email, but what about my other applications such as MS Office documents etc. that I don’t really have a lot of, but am forced to use to read any attachments etc. any plans down that route??
June 20th, 2006 at 7:37 am
Who decides what’s spam? I’ve had this problem before where a system (usually a corporate one) arbitrarily decides that some of my mail is “spam”.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:05 am
Hi Rico,
Attachments that come with mails are scanned by the service, so you’d be covered there. Basically anything IN the email (files attached for example … .doc, .xls, .zip) is scanned for viruses and blocked or repaired before hitting your local machine.
Terri … there are a number of ways spam is ‘decided’ … system logarithms, blacklisting, Bayesian filtering. There’s no point saying they’re perfect, but you’d be suprised how many mails are picked up that you never see … and how few are mistakenly marked as spam. There is a bit of training you have to do, marking some stuff as ‘junk’ and others as ‘allowed’.
Let me know if there’s anything I can do … or if you need more technical info I’ll have an Engineer get in touch with you.
June 7th, 2007 at 12:12 am
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