Free Home User Security Software

Because every Windows machine ought to have some form of Anti-Malware
Version 1.0
June 27, 2010

One of the most common questions I get asked when someone finds out I work in Information Security is, “What is the best anti-virus?” And my answer has always been, “It depends on your criteria….” There really isn’t a good definitive answer for that, especially since threats come out every hour and virus writers and their anti-virus counterparts are stuck in this whole cat and mouse game… in other words, at a certain point in time, you can say one product is better than another, but then what about in the next few hours? Also remember that Anti-Malware (as Google and a lot of other companies out there) can’t protect you from all the bad stuff out there, especially if its a targeted persistent attack. It’s but a layer of protection and won’t protect you from all attacks.

Sites that rank anti-virus products or sites that test files for viruses are the following:

Virus Total
European Expert Group for IT-Security
AV-Comparatives.org
AV-Test GmbH
Virus Bulletin
Top Ten Reviews: AntiVirus Software

One other common question I get asked is, “Can I protect my computer using free software?” And my answer would be, “You can reasonably protect a home PC using free tools as long as you practice good computer use habits (i.e. don’t surf high risk sites, be suspect of file attachments, not run in Admin, etc) and you use layers of defense.”

Avira AntiVir Personal – FREE Antivirus
avast! Free Anti Virus
AVG Antivirus Free Edition 9.0
Microsoft Security Essentials
Panda Cloud Antivirus

There are other anti-malware out there, however they are online only or don’t get high marks in some reviews. I’ll eventually include them here.

Also check out the NIST.org site on Free Anti-Malware
and PC World’s great, though dated, article on 15 Great, Free Privacy Downloads

Note: This will be a work in progress and I intend to have a page dedicated to free Anti-Malware and other Free Home User Security Software.

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More InfoSec Glossary: Freely Available ISO 27000 PDF

The ISO 27000 (Information security management systems — Overview and vocabulary) document is part of ISO’s Publicly Available Standards. Because of this, you may download it, store it on your PC, and print out one copy of the file, but aren’t allowed to transfer or place it on a network without the authorization of the copyright owner. You can read the whole License Agreement, and download the ISO 27000 document here.

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Another place to check out for InfoSec definitions is at the Software and Systems Engineering Vocabulary (SE VOCAB) Site. This is a project of the IEEE Computer Society, and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC7.

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