F-Secure Health Check is a web application that can perform a health check of a local Microsoft Windows operating system. A health check is basically divided into three areas of interest that are checked and an assessment in the end that lists possible solutions to the problems encountered. Area one will check for installed security [...]

Tags: f-secure, health check, Security, security check, security-software, web application
Categories: Security, The Web

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free security software that is being developed by Microsoft. The security software was released as a limited beta to users in the United States, Brazil and China. It was (actually still is) possible to download the beta from download portals like Betanews without experiencing limitations. That’s what many users did [...]

Tags: antivirus, antivirus software, microsoft, microsoft security essentials, windows security, windows software
Categories: Security, Windows, software

A friend recently asked me a bunch of questions about PC security. How dangerous email was, how people could attack a website and so forth. The answers to his questions led to this article which is not going to cover the usual PC security recommendations that always include using antivirus software, a firewall or malware [...]

Tags: email security, firefox, last pass, noscript, pc security, Security
Categories: Security

I have espoused encryption on Ghacks plenty of times. I find most users do not employ encryption, of any kind, which is somewhat surprising given the constant rate at which data is stolen. With the help of encryption your data is much safer than it would be in plain text. To deal with encryption you [...]

Tags: key server, keyserver, pgp, pgp keys, pgp keyserver
Categories: Advice, Desktop Manager, Linux, Open Source, Security, Tutorials Basic, software

We have caused quite some steer with our review of PeerBlock, a software program that would use blacklists to block IP addresses from communicating with the computer systems that were using the program. PeerBlock was basically a fork of PeerGuardian 2 offering a similar functionality and an active team of developers that would maintain, optimize [...]

Tags: P2p, p2p software, peer guardian 2, peerblock, portable software, windows software
Categories: Security, Windows, software

For the Linux operating system there are plenty of possibilities when it comes to firewalls. One possible option is Firestarter (You can read my “introductory” article “Firestarter: Simple to use desktop firewall” for an example of one such tool). You could also get very granular with the command line tool iptables. Of course most administrators [...]

Tags: firewall builder, fwbuilder, iptables, linux security
Categories: Advice, Linux, Open Source, Security, Tutorials Advanced

If you run any sort of server that is accessible by the public, you know the importance of certificate authorities (CAs). These certificates give your users a bit of insurance that your site is actually what it claims to be and not a spoofed version of your site waiting to either snag some data or [...]

Tags: CAs, certificate authority, server security, SubCAs, web server security
Categories: Advice, Linux, Open Source, Security, Server, Tutorials Basic, software