- Joined
- Dec 20, 2006
- Messages
- 27,042
- Reaction score
- 812
- Points
- 113
- Location
- Lake Mary, Florida
- Your Mac's Specs
- 14" MacBook Pro M1 Pro, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD
I like Microsoft's Security Essentials mostly because it's a good, non-invasive and relatively transparent AV. It doesn't nanny you and merely serves as the extra layer of DAT-based proactive scanning. I've never claimed it to be the end-all, be-all of AV. But for my needs, which are relatively scant given that I am well versed in security threats and social engineering, it does the job of preventing those rare situations where something crawls through my other defenses. It won't fit everyone's needs for sure - but it works for me. I also run BlueCoat's K9 proxy on most of my PCs, which prevents an awful lot of this stuff from slipping through, not to mention filtering out stuff I wouldn't want my kids stumbling into on their way to the various educational or entertainment sites they visit (Nickelodeon, Disney, etc).
I also put it on my customers' machines where I see no existing functional AV, but I do caution them that it's limited in its utility. I also tend to remove Flash, install Chrome as a default browser (which bundles Flash and keeps it fairly up-to-date) and pull Java. And of course, I educate - which is the best tool I can give them. Again, a hacker's worst enemy is an educated user - and no amount of AV will protect a user from themselves.
I also put it on my customers' machines where I see no existing functional AV, but I do caution them that it's limited in its utility. I also tend to remove Flash, install Chrome as a default browser (which bundles Flash and keeps it fairly up-to-date) and pull Java. And of course, I educate - which is the best tool I can give them. Again, a hacker's worst enemy is an educated user - and no amount of AV will protect a user from themselves.