Re: Is complete home security possible?

From: Arthur Hagen (art_at_broomstick.com)
Date: 02/06/05 

Date: Sun, 6 Feb 2005 02:58:40 -0500

Charles Newman
<charlesnewman1@comcast.net.spammers.will.be.shot.on.sight> wrote:
>>
>> 5) Setup Windows Updates to install at 3AM every day.
>
> The best way is to have it search for and download updates
> every time the machine is booted.

That would be very silly for those of us who reboot every few months.
Better to have it check late on Tuesdays, since Microsoft now always release
their security fixes on Tuesdays.

>> 6) Download and install FireFox and ThunderBird - free browser and
>> email clients.
>
> If you wamt to use Usenet, you will need Outlook Express
> installed.

Huh? Thunderbird does Usenet too, and so do a whole lot of other clients.

> If you are a gamer, some computer games will only run in
> administrator mode. Flight Simulator does this I know. If I log in
> under anything other than an administrator level account, I will an
> error message on FS98, FS2002, and FS2004, sayying that I need to be
> an administrator to
> use the program, and I have heard of a lot of other games having this
> problem.

Ever heard of "Run As", or even better, setting specific privileges through
the Security MMC snap-in?

> No argument there. I have a clean disk image made from Norton
> Ghost, and I regularly ghost my machines once a month. You should
> regulrly ghost your machines once a month.

Why should I do that instead of a weekly complete backup with daily
increments? That way, I don't have to reboot, which Ghost requires.

> In another newsgroup, one guy called my crazy for regularly
> ghosting my machines to get rid of any malware, but it is the only
> way to be sure nothing bad is lurking inside your machine.

It doesn't ensure that at all. You can easily ghost malware before you know
you've been infected. 

-- 
*Art

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is complete home security possible?
    ... >> than an administrator level account, I will an error message on FS98, ... I have a clean disk image made from Norton Ghost, ... >> and I regularly ghost my machines once a month. ... Well, I keep important files on a second hard disk in the NAT Box, ...
    (comp.security.firewalls)
  • Re: XP Upgrade project ideas needed
    ... Besides the health of the machines, it depends on the amount of software ... using Folder Redirection for user profiles, I'd go with Ghost. ... We just had to install about 20 PCs w/ XP Pro for a client - and since they ...
    (microsoft.public.backoffice.smallbiz)
  • Re: Cloning XP setups
    ... Regarding SIDs you can use utility called sysprep.exe. ... the image of the disk (using e.g. Ghost). ... documents go in depth how to create unatendent installation. ... > I've got 100 machines running XP Pro in a student lab. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.security_admin)
  • Re: Windows Installs New Devices After Image
    ... a server and push it out to the other 12 machines in our training room using ... Ghost. ... the message does NOT indicate what new hardware was detected. ... As far as I can tell at this point all of the PCs are identical in hardware. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Using ghost to deploy computers
    ... we deployed a few identical machines (and hence identical ... Now I'd like to save a ghost image, ... want to use the Symantec Enterprise v8.0 version of Ghost. ... all machines and you can also take full advantage of the multti-cast IP ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)