On Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:04:36 -0400, Louise <none@nospam.com> wrote:

>Win XP Pro, SP2 with MS firewall turned off. Heavy home/office user
>with cable ISP. Use Firefox 85% of the time. Use Outlook as my
>email/pim.
>
>I'm wondering whether I really need to run the amount of security
>software I'm running or whether it's taking too much overhead.
>
>I have a Linksys NAT router. I run Sygate Pro. I run Avast with all
>the shields active.
>
>I used to run Spysweeper only when I actually wanted to scan my machine
>every week or so.

It all depends on what sort of internet lifestyle you have.

You say you are a heavy office user, what does that mean? Do you run
web/mail/proxy/mySQL servers for example? Vulnerabilities in server
software could allow an intruder to completely own your box despite
the things you have right now. For this kind of situation you want to
look into things such as hardening your server/OS and using security
apps that monitor processes and prevent hijacking (ProcessGuard is
absolutely the best).

As a heavy home user do you install and experiment with a lot of stuff
from non mainstream sources? If you're not installing stuff regularly,
it tends to go the overkill side.

I would ditch Outlook, but that's more of a precaution than a
necessity. You should be alright but you never know where the next
security flaw is going to be. And be certain there will be.

Rootkit technology is only in its infancy so be on the lookout for new
preventive measures as this evolves. Right now, I think only
ProcessGuard type apps would be effective against it.