Family web security

Malo

Malo

Yak Mechanicum
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So our network at home has been steadily growing, the eldest now in middle school and wants to use a laptop more than her desktop (but still wants both), wife now has a laptop and just added a HTPC to the mix. Counting my WHS we now have 7 PCs total all being used.

I've used Trend Micro Internet Security for several years now and been fairly happy with it for performance, decent enough anti-virus/malware capabilities, good website filtering/blocking and parental controls. Renewal is coming up and my wife has tasked me with obtaining another license for both laptops and the HTPC (since it comes with licenses for 3 computers).

I figure this is a good time to decide if I want to change to a different product. Not many of the products around offer parental controls, which is vitally important for making sure my eldest keeps off the malware infested sites she invariably ends up at. Also handy for my own browsing as sometimes I'll end up at some website that happens to be exploited. (please don't start sprouting crap like FF+adblock+noscript blah blah)

So does anyone have recommendations for a product that could offer the following:

  • Provide 5-6 licenses (or purchase 2 separate ones)
  • Good anti-virus/spyware/malware etc realtime protection
  • Parental controls for category based website blocking
  • Very low performance impact
  • Standard features like folder exclusions, reporting, 64bit compability

I see Eset now offers Parental Controls in their Smart Security product and have generally heard good things about their protection.

Alternatively, forgetting about per-computer protection and going for a dedicated gateway protection device instead to provide the web protection and filtering? Is this feasible for low-cost non-enterprise yet?
 
I like Kaspersky. They do a 30 day trial of their Kaspersky Internet Security product if you want to test it out to see if you like it. You can also do stuff like remote admin, password lock down the settings so your children can't unlock web blocks, etc. Also comes in one/two year and 1/2/5 block licences.
 
K9 Web security.

Free web blocking software, very effective I found.

Kaspersky is good but is quite resource intensive especially for older computers.

Edit: Microsoft Security Essentials - found it was easy to fool and there is malware written targetting it - fooled me too, it was very well done. I have heard the new Norton is pretty good from a resource point of view but there are better options out there.

Try this comparison for some info: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372364,00.asp#fbid=ug0AxGQOimw
 
If you need more advanced features than MS Security Essentials I'd recommend going Eset. I had very good experiences from NOD32 going back years before I realized I was paying too much - I never get viruses, so I switched to MS SE.

However, I believe Eset stuff is still top-notch. They score highly in the tests, and they have fast, low-overhead tech. I ran NOD32 always on my gaming rig and never noticed ANY issues at all, not with running games, or installing various drivers/software and so on.

Good luck safeguarding your wee little kiddies. :)
 
I built a little dual-core Atom box and run Untangle on it...it's way better than software options.
http://www.untangle.com/

Firewall, protocol control, captive portal to control when they can get online, web filtering, spam filtering, AV, anti-spyware, etc.

Oh, did I mention it's free?
 
I recommend net intelligence
http://www.netintelligence.com/

If your worried about kids circumventing it, well with the supplied security login its incredibly easy but if you dont have that its a huge pita to circumvent Ive had a few people come to me to disable it and it's a massive pain (there is some scheme in the u.k to give students discount laptops and they are supplied with it installed)
 
I have employees at three sites in two countries who have failed to circumvent Untangle. :)
 
Mize said:
I built a little dual-core Atom box and run Untangle on it...it's way better than software options.
http://www.untangle.com/

Firewall, protocol control, captive portal to control when they can get online, web filtering, spam filtering, AV, anti-spyware, etc.

Oh, did I mention it's free?
Click to expand...

Yeah I have actually looked at this a few times over the last year for work and I might actually consider it for home. The free version uses open support software to provide it's detection and filtering capabilities, which I guess won't really be as good as the paid version. For instance, the Web Filter part has about 1m websites in it's db, where as the paid Web Filter has about 450m.

I'll definitely look into it though, thanks! And I appreciate the rest of the feedback as well regarding the suggestions for security suites and parental controls. That K9 software looks great as a free solution, and could even be a companion to Untangle running on my daughters computers only.

I think MSE is a decent free product but I don't consider it robust and effective enough as a sole solution for malware protection.
 
Davros said:
Or have they just not tried ;)
Click to expand...

Maybe, but Untangle is a commercial firewall targeting business and is well-reviewed. The free modules do have limitations compared to the premium, paid add-ons, but just the fact that I can log every site is enough to keep people from misbehaving. I love the captive portal and not having anything on the clients. Software on the client is the easiest to circumvent. Other than guessing a password or some sophisticated MAC address spoofing I don't think it's too easy to get around Untangle's captive portal.
 
My kids are teenagers so keep that in mind, but another big advantage of Untangle is that I can admin it remotely. This means I can have them call me after school and, once they tell me their homework is done, I can then enable the internet for them. I can also vpn to my servers, etc.

Can you tell I like it?
 
Avast doesn't have a parental control feature.

Mize, you're winning me over. There doesn't seem to be much around for Atom boards with dual LAN (which I assume will be required for Untangle), couple of boards I've found. I could probably build a box for under a few hundred.
 
Your idea of free needs some work :D



would they just unplug the cable and plug it straight into the router totally bypassing untangle ?
Click to expand...

untangle is the router
 
If you are just concerned about security, the software solutions by themselves are fine. However, if you want content control, you really need a dedicated box / gateway because anyone who wants unrestricted access is just going to pop in a linux live CD, have their own "system on a usb stick," virtual machine, etc...

Depending on how bright/persistent the subjects are... OpenDNS would be a good (free) place to start.... still all it takes is one proxy...
 
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