Do I have enough security as far as antivirus and firewall?

Question

I'm running Vista Home Premium.

I use Avira (free) antivirus that usually gets updated daily automatically, if not more than once per day. I use Online Armor (free version) for a basic firewall.

Other than that, I try to avoid going to sites that I know may have something malicious on them, and try to keep my Windows updates up to date.

Is this "good enough"? Avira stopped a Trojan Horse program earlier when I was doing a google search through the google website, oddly enough. I typed in the text to search for, hit enter to search and Avira went crazy with a trojan horse alert twice for the same trojan horse. It never executed - I hit the button in Avira to cancel the run process so it never got a chance to infect my system. It just makes me a little iffy if there is every *too much* protection...though my system isn't fast enough to scan with like 10 things on a regular basis. It's a fast system, but Vista Premium really kills it...I do have on-access file protection enabled in Avira, of course.

I do a lot of banking and bill paying for credit cards and such online. I just want to stay 'safe'. I already know about the fake phishing emails and can spot those immediately with no problem. It's just the viruses and mainly the trojan horses that I worry about sometimes.

Answer 1

Download AVG or Avast and you wont have to worry about any problems they are both free programs and they are the best.

Answer 2

Your doing very good, much Better than most people are these days, how ever the one thing I would suggest is your service packs for vista (this will stop it from running so slow and takeing up so much memory) and also sometimes things can actually be in the windows updates that you do not want, some of them bordering on invasion of privacy, so make sure you know what you are updating on your computer, if you feel your soft were is not as good a job as it claims then I would have to suggest Norton, it is very good and blocks almost everything, just by it self it is very good, over all though it sounds like you should be fine, just stay off of public net works while doing backing etc. (any wifi, library internet, hotel internet..) and basic stuff like that, and don't be giving your bank account number to some pour dieing person in africa who's last wish is to give you their fortune and all you have to do is help them with it! LOL hope this helps,



Zander :)

Answer 3

YES... Good for you that Avira caught it in time. It's doing exactly what it is supposed to do (protecting you). Avira has never let me down either...



As for Online Armor, I think it is the best free firewall available... I have trouble running it because of a driver conflict with a graphic card but if I could, I would...



Only thing different I would suggest is adding a very good "behavioral based" program that is getting a lot of attention lately named "Threatfire"... It will work along side of most all anti-virus software without any problems. I use it along with my Avira and has caught a few "suspicious" files before....You may also want to add a great stand-alone anti-malware program called "Malwarebytes" for spyware/malware protection (just as a back-up)... They have a free version available. Now, you have rock solid protection...



http://www.threatfire.com/download/

http://www.malwarebytes.org/



You have a great set-up and I wish you the best of luck !!!

Answer 4

Your protection is reasonable. it's good to know that Avira stopped a Trojan dead in it's tracks as most Anti-Virus have a hard time with Trojans.



The only thing i could suggest is to add a free copy of Malwarebytes just in case something does slip through your defences.

Answer 5

You're good to go. Safe surfing is the best way to avoid viruses. You should download the WOT add-on for further security. It will color code sites to tell you if it has been known to be malicious or not.

The add-on will work with IE or Firefox.