Anti Virus program
- Thread starter Eddie
- Start date
I agree, use built-in Defender. Keep in mind, A/V is your last line of defense. Often, if your A/V caught something legit, it's already broken through and entered your local system.
Better to shore up defenses upstream:
-use DNS filtering to block malicious pages from resolving. There are free and paid versions. Quad9 is free and has good malware filtering. https://www.quad9.net/
-use Ublock Origin web browser extension which has several quality filters built in that not only protect from dangerous sites, but block unwanted ads as well.
-if you're an advanced user, you can build an open source firewall with a spare computer to use as your router. IPFire and pfSense are both really good. pfSense is not as user-friendly as IPFire, but it is more feature-rich. Both have intrusion prevention systems, web proxys, and lots of other filtering options.
Better to shore up defenses upstream:
-use DNS filtering to block malicious pages from resolving. There are free and paid versions. Quad9 is free and has good malware filtering. https://www.quad9.net/
-use Ublock Origin web browser extension which has several quality filters built in that not only protect from dangerous sites, but block unwanted ads as well.
-if you're an advanced user, you can build an open source firewall with a spare computer to use as your router. IPFire and pfSense are both really good. pfSense is not as user-friendly as IPFire, but it is more feature-rich. Both have intrusion prevention systems, web proxys, and lots of other filtering options.
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Sophos also has a free version of their XG firewall, FWIW.
For DNS filtering, I use CIRA, as I've found it is by far the most extensive, but it's exclusive to Canada and expensive. For something free, OpenDNS (now part of Cisco Umbrella) is free and, if you make an account, you have granular control over traffic filtering, can block specific categories...etc.
How can I be certain that Defender is operational?
Type Windows Security into the start/search bar in your taskbar at the bottom and make sure these two are green. The other boxes in Windows Security are worth checking out also for more information.
Windows Defender with a Brave browser as main, with startpage search engine. Back up browser is Firefox with startpage search engine I also do a malwarebytes scan (free version) about every -2-3 months. I guess by default Win 11 has Edge browser, but we never use it and cant get rid of it or disable it.
