There are 2 types of computer firewall. One is a network firewall and other is personal computer firewall. A network firewall is basically the skin of your system; it is considered the first line of defense for your network. That is, it absolutely serves as a guarding system for both incoming and outgoing traffic that happens in your computer system. The main purpose of a firewall is to keep unwanted and uninvited guests from browsing and checking your network, as well as install malicious code that could further compromise the network’s security. This can be a hardware device or either a software application and usually is placed at the outskirts of the system to operate as the gatekeeper for all incoming and outgoing traffic.

ZoneAlarm Pro makes sure that it performs all the jobs a firewall should do. According to reviews, ZoneAlarm Pro is one of most powerful and functional firewall software available. Here is why it has won-over thousands of users:

1. Protects the computer from incoming or outgoing illegal transmission. In case a hacker was able to enter the computer he is prevented from stealing personal or confidential information, which essentially negates the purpose of invading your system in the first place. Some of the more savvy hackers tend to ignore systems that they know is protected by ZoneAlarm Pro.

2. Idle port blocking: This means that when the ports are opened during transmission they are guarded thoroughly. So, when the ports are done doing its job ZoneAlarm Pro turns it off to avoid any exploit. This will prevent hackers with port scanners from entering your system using unused or idle ports that were accidentally left open, or opened for use by other software.

3. Stateful inspection: The software examines the packet and port information to prevent the system from spoofing-style invasions, which compromise systems by masquerading as friendly or expected communication signals.

4. Full-stealth mode: This means that the software makes sure that the ports of the system are invisible during scanning of ports, which negates any attempts by hackers to trawl the net and scan for open ports that may be vulnerable to brute force attempts.

5. Self-protection: The software has the ability to defend itself when a malicious program is trying to harm it, particularly in the case of malware that tries to modify or tamper with the program codes of security softwares. ZoneAlarm Pro will automatically block any attempts to modify its source, both in memory and at the disk.

6. OSFirewall: Tracks harmful and suspicious activities observed at the operating system area.

7. MD5 spoof protection: Hackers are prevented from taking advantage of valid programs from being used as a host or carrier of malicious files.

8. Behavioral rootkit detection: Blocks any rootkit programs depending on the behavior instead heuristics or signatures.

Gen Wright
http://www.articlesbase.com/computer-forensics-articles/freeware-firewall-software-zonealarm-pro-719745.html

It’s pretty common knowledge that majority of Microsoft’s operating systems have a fair number of vulnerabilities and exploits that hackers and other malicious individuals tend to take advantage of in order to compromise your system and use it to spread malware, or even collect sensitive data which they can use to steal identities and even finances.

One of the ways a user can protect himself is by installing third party programs such as an antivirus and a firewall to safeguard the PC and make up for the security shortcomings and flaws of the operating system. The problem usually lies in the fact that antivirus software and firewalls don’t come cheap, and usually don’t come together in a bundle. Fortunately, there is a freeware alternative that is offered as a free download: The EZ Armor Security Suite.

If you are a Microsoft customer, you can obtain the EZ Armor Security Suite for free. This is an antivirus and personal firewall bundle from Computer Associates. Merely, it catches updates, which is only free for the first year. The antivirus software would not be of much value and worth after the first year as it is necessary to keep your antivirus software up to date, otherwise it is going to be vulnerable to newer viruses and 0-day threats, which tend to happen a lot sooner these past few years.

As experienced by most subscribers the installation went fast and very smooth. Be sure that you uninstall any antivirus and personal firewall products that you currently have installed before attempting to set up this software, as coexistence could result in software conflicts and even system crashes - for the very reason that the way that antivirus and personal firewall products work is not conducive to several ones working together in tandem. It is rarely, if ever, a good idea to install more than one.

By evasion, the antivirus software checks all files that are accessed. Some of the antivirus software can considerably slow your computer when file checking is enabled, but this product seems to be well behaved in that area, due to its efficient use of system resources and the optimized code it contains. There are times when you won’t even notice the software running in the background.
In some cases, there are users who have noticed that it was a re-branded version of ZoneAlarm Pro. ZoneAlarm Pro has been very effective in preventing malicious programs for accessing the Internet. It is often known that the configuration is very easy with their startup wizard. Firewall is often found to be very beneficial to every user. The firewall feature makes sure that the information entering and going out the system is not harmful for your computer.

Gen Wright
http://www.articlesbase.com/computer-forensics-articles/freeware-antispyware-software-ez-armor-security-suite-719747.html

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve never had it either detect or remove any malware, and that’s not because my machine wasn’t infected.

Rogue Software often has a very Professional-Looking Interface

A growing threat to PC health and network security comes in the form of fake anti-virus and anti-spyware programs circulating the Internet. These programs use a variety of techniques to infect computers. One common way is with a web pop-up from a compromised site, stating that the user’s PC is infected with spyware and offering a free download to scan and clean the computer. Accepting the offer actually installs the rogue software. Sometimes clicking “Cancel” or even the red “x” to close the window will actually launch the installer. Other methods of infection include the use of Trojan downloaders already present on targeted PCs, links in spam, and even “drive-by” infections.

Rogue software often has a very professional-looking interface, complete with advanced graphical displays and good command of security buzzwords. They usually link to impressive websites listing the virtues and industry recognition of the software - which is, of course, fictional. The names all sound like legitimate anti-malware software, and in some cases will be almost identical to genuine security software. Some recent names include AntiSpyware Master, SpyGuarder, and Doctor Antivirus.

The primary goal of most rogue security software is to trick the user into purchasing an “upgrade,” which typically costs around $30.00 to $50.00. These malicious programs will run artificial “scans” of the affected computer, and report any number of viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, and adware. These reports are generally all fake positives, since the rogue software does not actually scan the computer. It will then promise to clean all these threats from the PC if the user follows a link and purchases the upgrade. The upgrade may or may not prevent the scanning program from continuing to report false positives. In any case, it is likely to result in more serious infections, as these rogue programs are associated with a variety of Trojans and other malware.
Some of the most malicious rogue anti-malware programs have more nefarious goals. They install key loggers to steal confidential information, or agents to add the infected computer to a botnet. The prevalence of rogue security software is rising. Trend Micro has reported a 5-fold year-over-year increase, and estimates that these applications account for as much as 10 percent of all current infections.

Removal of this kind of malware rarely works with the normal “Add and Remove Programs” utility. Manual removal usually entails booting into Windows Safe mode, searching for and removing specific files, unregistering affected dlls, and editing the registry. In other words, removal is beyond the capabilities of many end users. There are some free utilities that can help, like Malwarebyte’s free Rogue Remover utility. Naturally, a pro-active defense is preferred. Users should never trust a web site that claims to have discovered malware on their PCs without being asked. Free scans should only be requested from well-known, trusted sites. Rogue applications are usually detected by genuine anti-malware applications, so keeping anti-virus programs, firewalls, and email scanners up to date will mitigate the risk of infection.

Rita Bansal
http://www.articlesbase.com/software-articles/rogue-software-often-has-a-very-professionallooking-interface-733215.html

Irrespective of being a PC or a Mac the computer system behavior and consistency are dependent upon certain factors. These factors are broadly divided into software factors, hardware factors and the surroundings.

The common software factors leading to a logical failure are:

i.) System files responsible for handling control to the operating system missing or corrupt

ii.) Unsigned drivers or drivers trying to access read only system area

iii.) Operating system files corruption due to incomplete automatic update, Malicious Software

The common hardware factors leading to a physical failure are:

i.) Problems related to mainboard in terms of the chipset or connector, power supply issue like incompetent power supply to run the hardware setup

ii.) Problems related to hard drive itself or the data or power cables

iii.) Improper setup of hard drive cooler fans (if any)

The common surrounding factors leading to data loss are:

i.) Heat dissipation issues related to closed or poorly ventilated surroundings like in a basement or store

ii.) Moist surroundings leading to the formation of thick dust layers and thus increasing heat

iii.) Direct sunlight leading to extra heat and thus hardware failure

We should logically negate these scenarios so that we can narrow down to the root cause of the problem and take corrective measures.

In case we find that the data loss is due to any logical failure, we can use data recovery software as they are programmed to meet the challenges due to all kind of logical crashes. They scan through the file system, locate all the files which are marked as deleted and are distributed as fragments across the partition, logically rearrange them as per the file system information and then recover them. The data recovery software are indispensable in cases like file system corruption, hard drive formatting operating

system corruption, accidental file deletion or malicious software like virus, spyware etc. We can perform a ‘Do It Yourself’ data recovery using these utilities as they are self descriptive and User friendly.

We need to install the data recovery software on another hard drive which is bootable. We can also use a different working system preferably using the same operating system platform as for MS Windows. Then, we can attach our hard drive to the same for scanning. For attaching the hard drive we nowadays use USB 2.0 Hi Speed or IEEE 1394/Firewire Cables, Attachments or Enclosures. The same can be achieved by a Master and Slave setup that requires hard drive jumper operations and thus is a little complex. We should avoid any other jumper operations as of the mainboard as they may lead to unstable system behavior based on BIOS settings.

We should always save the recovered data on a healthy hard drive.

In case of data loss due to hardware failure where the hard drive is either not getting powered or can not be recognized by the BIOS, we need to go for hard drive recovery service. The data recovery service is personalized help, delivered by data recovery experts. Such experts can extract your data in all possible scenarios of physical data loss.

Both these data recovery solutions are completely different from each other and have unique approaches in recovering data. There are several data recovery companies, which offer data recovery software and services, a user should opt for the best among them by comparing their features, reviews that is quality and pricing.

Stellar Information Systems Limited is the best bet to solve all our data loss issues. Stellar provides high quality data recovery softwarefor almost all operating systems and file systems.

The Data Recovery Service of Stellar is the global numero uno. The reason behind is Stellar’s sheer commitment towards the highest quality standards in terms of Research and Development and Software Testing as a dedicated and never ending approach.

It is carried out in safe environment of State Of The Art Class 100 Clean Rooms by skilled data recovery experts. It is available for all types of hard drives including SATA, SCSI, IDE/EIDE (PATA) and ATA interface hard drives.

To know more about these products, we should download and use free demo versions that are available on Stellar’s website.

kmadhav
http://www.articlesbase.com/data-recovery-articles/data-recovery-data-loss-scenarios-due-to-hardware-and-software-issues-729382.html

It’s always important to be very careful in today’s internet world where surfing the internet and downloading free software is more popular than ever. With a lot of this free software Trojans can piggyback on the program and then it silently installs antivirus2008 pro onto your computer without your consent. If you fall into their trap, not only will you be down $50 (the price of a subscription) but you will also find yourself in a bigger mess than you could have ever anticipated. Antivirus2008pro will attempt to run a fraudulent scan on your computer and then will give you false results to scare you into paying $50 to buy their protection. However, instead you will find your computer flooded with popups and system notifications warning of nonexistent infections. This doesn’t even take into account the terrible system performance you will notice on your computer. Antivirus2008pro will use up so much of your CPU throwing the popups and system notifications that the only benefit you will see will be very slow performance.

If you find that your wallpaper has suddenly changed or that you have some new random icons on your desktop there is a good chance that you have antivirus2008pro. You can take the following steps to remove it manually:

Kill these processes:

Antvrs.exe
Antivirus2008Pro.exe

Press Alt+Ctrl+Delete –>Task Manager. Select the Image Names below under the “Processes” tab and then click on “End Process”

Delete these registries:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareAntivirus
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun”Antivirus” = “%ProgramFiles%Antivirus 2008 ProAntvrs.exe”
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREAntivirus

Go to Start –> Run –> Type “regedit”. Delete the files listed above

Unregister these DLLs:
shlwapi.dll
wininet.dll

To unregister go to Start > Run > type regedit > press OK.

Edit the value (on the right pane) by right-clicking on it and selecting the Modify option. Select the Delete option.
Delete these files:

shlwapi.dll
wininet.dll
Antvrs.exe
Antivirus2008Pro.exe

The warning here is that it’s never a good idea to manually remove programs like these yourself. The best bet is to invest in a trusted antispyware program that can keep programs like this off of your computer. It’s a small investment to make to help protect yourself from identity theft and many other problems you could come across by having a program like this installed on your computer. Many programs like antivirus2008pro can track your every move while they reside on your computer. They can capture your credit card information, user name and password and much more personal information. Then they sell this private data to hackers who will use it for their own illegal benefit. By having a trusted spyware on your computer you will be notified anytime a Trojan tries to silently install something on your computer. Ordinarily you may be blindsided by an install like that but with an antispyware it will be constantly monitoring your system and watching for things like this.

There are plenty of options available to you today but you have to make the effort to do some research and find one with a good reputation that will protect you from thieves like antivirus2008pro.

Carl Atkinson
http://www.articlesbase.com/security-articles/how-you-can-avoid-malicious-software-like-antivirus2008-pro-674525.html

I was wondering that because I already had to COMPLETELY wipe off my computer and start over. Does this one pop up in your desktop creating random viruses and force you to pay a really expensive bill?

If its from Microsoft, its ok. This is the real one and its free to use.
http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.aspx

Be concerned that I have a Keylogger?

Sometimes you need to try a different variety of scanners, such as AVG Antivirus. AVG is a very good anti-virus, spyware, malware, etc, but it takes up alot of RAM to run, (makes computer slower)

Often times i decline downloading this software from microsoft coz i’m worried it might affect my O.S. .Is ok to download this software even im running unregistered O.S on my computer?

If your sure yes.

It is recommened you do once in a while.

Please note that sometimes viruses may attack once found,
but dont be scared.
its best to download it.
just be safe!~

download windows defender here: (100% works )
www.microsoft.com

1] Keylogger
2]Spyware
3]Viruses

1,2,3 all in different ways . if you get messages like a not deliverable message you didn’t send you may have a problem or you are being attacked.