July 11, 2020

Welcome! Craig discusses Anti-Virus - The one to use and why plus more on Tech Talk with Craig Peterson on WGAN

11 minutes

Welcome!

In this segment, Craig explains what the best type of Anti-Virus to use is and why.

For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com

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Automated Machine-Generated Transcript:

[00:00:00] Well, there is a lot of antivirus software available up there for free but, should you be using it?

Hi everybody. This is Craig Peterson. We're going to talk right now a little bit about the antivirus software that is out there. What I think you should be using in order to help keep yourself safe enough online. There is no such thing as totally safe. Is there? But we'll give you. Actual names, places you can go, things you can do.

We also talk a little bit today about YouTube and police roll up some crime networks over there in Europe. This new Mac ransomware is even more sinister than it appears. We'll talk a little bit about ransomware in general as well. Hey, I want you guys to take a couple of minutes right now. If you would make sure you sign up for my email list.

Go to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. I've got some really cool

[00:01:00] things for you there. Once you subscribe, I have like three or four different things, and I got a lot of comments on them over the last couple of weeks, we put them up. One of them is a security reboot guide, and it has been so popular.

Hey, listen, let's start again with your security. Let's reboot. This stuff it's become so popular. I think what we may do is turn this into a kind of a post-COVID-19 little thing. Maybe even have a course on it. So we'll be doing that as well, but you'll get that. If you subscribe Craig peterson.com/subscribe. So please do that. I'm not going to just send you all kinds of crap.

I send good stuff. Believe me. We have people that have been on my email list now for decades. So it's good stuff. All right. Then the let's get into the good stuff right now. And that has to do with all of this antivirus software. You know, our friends over at Microsoft have come

[00:02:00] up with their own antivirus software if you will.

Who knows the whole windows environment better than Microsoft. Well, that's how the thinking goes. Microsoft has even released versions of it's kind of antivirus software for Linux. If you can believe it. I don't, I'm having a hard time with that, but I guess they have to because now they're including Linux as part of windows.

Now, if that's not a tacit admission that you need Linux, I don't know what. Is Linux is really great for a lot of people and a lot of things, but it is kind of difficult to use. I have a friend who uses Linux and has for probably 20 plus years. Now, he listened to what I had to say way back then started exploring Linux.

He's an insurance adjuster, Pat, and he had tried to figure out what's the best one. What should I use coming from a windows environment? I had helped them with solving some insurance problems. Some

[00:03:00] insurance claims against some windows machines where some of the data had been mangled badly and then I wrote some, some code from scratch in the Unix world. In fact, Linux extracted all of this stuff.

You know, there was a doctor who had was a plastic surgeon. He had all of these photos of all of the patients and that he had inadvertently when he was messing around with all these photos. Change the name of every photo to be exactly the same. So they had no idea who the photos were of when they were taken.

They had nothing. So I wrote some code that went into the photos and, and, went in and looked around and found good data and made it so they could recover those photos for those people that had to have the plastic surgery.

So Pat said to me, Craig, How can I be secure, now? This was some years ago, as I said, probably two decades ago. I said, well, there's no way to be

[00:04:00] completely secure in the online space, Pat, but I can tell you one thing, windows is not the place to be. If you are looking at security.

That is still the case today. If you're truly a security researcher, you are going to be using a VR version of Linux. A lot of people that just need to go online, who just need to access basic websites are using these Google Chrome devices, which are absolutely fantastic little devices.

Now they don't meet all of the regulatory compliance issues that. You might have if you are in some sort of a regulated space as a business. I definitely don't like them in the school environment because Google has been caught taking the information about our students and selling it and sharing it.

So, you know, I'm not a big Google fan and that's part of the reason why. But if you are a security guy and you want

[00:05:00] something that doesn't really store much locally, that gets updated all of the time.

Then the Chromebook is not a bad option and they use that now. And what's the Chromebook based on, of course, it has a Linux kernel underneath it. And Linux was designed to be secure before there was Linux. There were various versions of Unix, BSD being one of the big ones, A T and T, UNIX system three, system five, all of which I've had experience with over the years, man, it's been awhile are the predecessors of it. That's how the internet was designed. And the BSD, this Berkeley software distribution of Unix that comes from way back when the and threes and just earlier's it. How that. It was really designed to keep students out of the systems to provide the very first networking that ever there was.

There was some of the very first, there was actually some of the machines that were before

[00:06:00] these Unix machines, but it is absolutely fantastic.

But, Pat figured out how to use Linux. And he was very determined. He managed to do it. I don't think it's for everybody. Dell does now offer Linux pre-installed on some of their laptop lines.

So if you're interested in Linux and you like Dell and Dell is what we typically recommend nowadays. Be careful when we're talking about Dell because there's the consumer stuff and then there's the enterprise stuff, right? There is a difference between the two. But when we're talking about these Dell laptops that have Linux pre-installed, they are kept up to date.

They do get their patches. Now Microsoft has had anti-virus for some of these versions of Linux, but you might want to try them out. Try out either a Chromebook or try out a Linux laptop, or even a desktop. I tend to use Mac. Because, unless it's a server function, in which

[00:07:00] case I use a version of Unix, either BSD, derivative, like open BSD, which is one of the more secure versions of Unix out there. Or I use free BSD, or I use Ubuntu or Red Hat. I tend to use Red Hat a lot, but I use those for servers. I don't use those for desktop.

So back into the antivirus software realm, Where you really, really need antivirus software is on your Windows computer. There are antivirus software packages that are available for all kinds of other platforms for your Android devices, which again are not terribly secure.

We've talked about that before. I'm not going to talk about it right now and you could use it on some other platforms as well. Kaspersky has some for Linux. And as I mentioned, Microsoft does now too, but you really, really, really gotta be careful on Windows. It's attacked more than anything else. It is so common and it was so poorly

[00:08:00] designed that it has all kinds of nasty holes all over the place.

So the first piece of advice here, when we're talking about keeping your Windows computer safe, Is to use Windows defender. That sounds pretty straightforward. Does it? A lot of people use Windows defender. It's pretty solid. Make sure you've got it turned on. Cause it is on by default, but make sure it's turned on and make sure it's getting updated.

So that's number one. Now we get into the third party software very, very quickly here. Now antivirus software is useless. A hundred percent against the most modern of attacks. So antivirus software will work for some of the old stuff. Now some of the old stuff still floating around out there and people are still getting nailed because they have not applied the patches to Windows and to all of the other programs that they have sitting

[00:09:00] on that Windows machine.

So yeah, your antivirus software could do you some good, but frankly, you shouldn't need it cause you should be all patched up. But. What I think you should get. And again, this is not a hundred percent and now things are a hundred percent, but go ahead and get Malwarebytes Malwarebytes, and put it on your Windows PC.

It is a good idea also to put it on to your Macintosh computers, Malwarebytes. We tend to use something beyond Malwarebytes is called AMP, which is the anti-malware prevention software from Cisco. It's very good. I don't think you can buy it retail. I think you have to buy it through a reseller like me, but there are plenty of resellers out there.

So if you can afford it, put AMP on your computer. But if not, get a paid version of Malwarebytes because you're going to get a little bit better

[00:10:00] coverage for businesses. You're going to get some on-call support. It's going to be easier to use. You get some anti-phishing stuff, some extra banking security.

Some of them include password managers and you know how important I keep telling everybody how important password managers are. I prefer by far 1password. That's what it's called the digit one password in order to keep all of my accounts safe in the online world, online space because one password just requires you to remember one really good password.

Everything else is stored in a vault on the computer and you, you can't get much better than the way one password does it. We also use a third party, something called DUO. but you know, that's more advanced stuff that we're not going to get into right now.

So. AMP I like number one, number two, Malwarebytes.

Both of those are paid.

[00:11:00] You can get free versions of Malwarebytes by the way. Although if you can afford it, go ahead and buy it. And it's going to provide protection for the whole family. Sometimes these things are really rather cheap. I'm surprised at how little Malwarebytes costs, but it isn't like the best thing in the world.

And Bitdefender, absolutely Bitdefender is the other one to look at. Okay. Bitdefender, Hey, I'm out of time for right now. We're going to be back.

So stick around you listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN and I'm on every Wednesday morning at seven 30. Two with Mr. Matt during the drive time show, stick around.

We're going to finish this list. When we get back, visit me online. Craig Peterson.com.

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