Another Piece of the Security Puzzle

Yesterday, I was writing about the nastiness in store for just about any computer that finds itself connected to the internet. The Secunia Personal Software Inspector is a fine way to keep your installed software up to date, thereby reducing any attack vectors.

Another way that problems can arise is when something tries to manipulate your system directly, as in changing your start page, or installing a program that will not be noticed until the next start cycle. By then it could certainly be too late.

It doesn’t need be malicious, just ill-timed. Some programs may want to install something, perfectly harmless in most cases, but because of your specific hardware, or perhaps another program you have running, the change will render your PC useless and unable to boot, or possibly without some function or connection you count on.

The best way to avoid this is to have something watching, keeping track of any changes in the startup files, the registry, or any of the many places that an ill placed entry can wreak havoc.

Better than any other program I’ve found, WinPatrol is a watchdog, guarding your machine from all sorts of problems, mainly through watching specific areas of the computer for any change. WinPatrol does many things that other programs do, but does them better, and also combines them, so that, instead of running many smaller programs of dubious efficacy, you can run one program, whose results are easier to predict, and difficulties made easier to track, for only one program is changing things.

A brand new version has just arrived, and works with all versions of Windows from 98 to 7. Not many programs are that flexible, or handy. Though there is a free version, if you find the program useful you should really kick down some bucks to the author for the paid version, which may add nothing else you need, but will make you (and him) feel good, knowing you are supporting a great project – and will assure that work on the program continues. By the way, the license is perpetual (all future upgrades are free), and covers all the PCs you personally own – you can’t do any better than that!

Highly recommended (and personally used.)

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