Firewalls with Application Control

[buzzmong]

Righto, so I've been using Zone Alarm (with most turned off) for a basic firewall with application control for yonks now, which it was actually quite good at.

The latest update has seen it silently deny any changed applications, despite it being set to tell me something wants access, and it's really annoying me as it was the only thing I used it for.

What are 5punkers currently using for firewalls and application control? Is NoD32 still the AV of choice?

[deject]

People still care about application control? I haven't given that a thought in years. I just use the built-in Windows Firewall, and for AV I have been using the built-in Windows Defender for Win8 (which is Microsoft Security Essentials renamed).

[Thompy]

Yeah I haven't used any other AV since MSE was released. Last I knew Malwarebytes was still the program of choice outside of MSE. I'm not enough of a power user (that term still exist?) to bother with extra firewall stuff.

[ProfHawking]

Yarr, app control is annoying. But i can see it might have some use in some cases, especially if you dont trust the user.
Anywhoo, I use and recommend NOD32 Antivirus (not smart security which is overkill if you ask me) in combo with windows firewall when required.

[FatherJack]

I use the built-in firewall for Windows and Microsoft Security Essentials (not actually just Windows Defender, as that's just virus-protection, Microsoft Security Essentials adds malware/some-spyware protection as well) pretty much exclusively on workstations and servers unless I need virus/spam protection on email servers.

NOD32 lost my patronage with some unfortunate false-positves, since I'm generally careful anyways I considered I could do without it. For careless users I plop on SpybotSD - it hasn't been updated since ever, but the innoculate function still does a good job at locking down known-good configs such that any naughty changes are flagged and the user actually gets a notification that they may be compromising themselves.

AV software seems to be lagging behing the curve quite considerably of late. I've got a number of clients who were aggressively upsold Norton for their new Win8 machines, yet it's still not actually fully compatible. People who don't know that Windows since XP (or Fista at least) comes as standard with a perfectly decent AV protection system are being robbed daily.

Norton used to make great products, but since the takeover by Symantec, I've not seen much to commend them.

[deject]

Microsoft Security Essentials (not actually just Windows Defender, as that's just virus-protection, Microsoft Security Essentials adds malware/some-spyware protection as well)

The Windows 8 version of Windows Defender is Microsoft Security Essentials if I wasn't totally clear about that. The old Windows Defender was utterly useless and got cut completely.

[FatherJack]

Microsoft Security Essentials (not actually just Windows Defender, as that's just virus-protection, Microsoft Security Essentials adds malware/some-spyware protection as well)

The Windows 8 version of Windows Defender is Microsoft Security Essentials if I wasn't totally clear about that. The old Windows Defender was utterly useless and got cut completely.

Ah, I guess they combined them in 8, they're still seperate things in 7.

[deject]

Microsoft Security Essentials (not actually just Windows Defender, as that's just virus-protection, Microsoft Security Essentials adds malware/some-spyware protection as well)

The Windows 8 version of Windows Defender is Microsoft Security Essentials if I wasn't totally clear about that. The old Windows Defender was utterly useless and got cut completely.

Ah, I guess they combined them in 8, they're still seperate things in 7.

Exactly. One less thing you need to worry about in Windows 8.

[Thompy]

Exactly. One less thing you need to worry about in Windows 8.

I discovered the native disc image mounting yesterday. I was grinning