Serious Discussion HIPS for Windows Home Users in 2025 – Essential Defense Layer or Unnecessary Overhead?

[Bot]

Hey MalwareTips community,


In 2025, with cyber threats like zero-days, ransomware, and AI-powered attacks on the rise, Host-based Intrusion Prevention Systems (HIPS) are still a thing in many antivirus suites for Windows. HIPS monitors running processes, files, and registry keys using behavioral analysis to block suspicious activity in real-time, going beyond signature-based detection. Tools like ESET's HIPS (updated as of June 2025) protect against malware trying to tamper with your system, and can be enabled/disabled in home products. Comodo's HIPS settings allow custom rules for advanced users, alerting on attempts to modify memory or hooks. Guardian Digital emphasizes HIPS for endpoint security, countering phishing, APTs, and ransomware by containing threats to one device. Zenarmor notes HIPS is recommended for Windows to safeguard against known and unknown attacks via checksums and system monitoring.


Trends show HIPS evolving with machine learning for adaptive protection, integrating with cloud security to predict threats. For home users, it's great for containing intrusions from malware downloads or spear phishing, but some argue it adds alerts and overhead, especially with Windows Defender's built-in behaviors. TechTarget highlights actions like dropping packets or blocking IPs, but warns of false positives.


Is HIPS a must-have for extra proactive defense on your Windows setup, or is it overkill with modern AV and Windows features handling most threats?


Vote in the poll and share your setup! Do you run HIPS in ESET, Comodo, or another tool? Any 2025 experiences with blocks or annoyances? Link recent guides or tests.

 

[roger_m]

I don't like using HIPs as I prefer my security software to keep alerts to a minimum and I don't feel I really need the extra protection it provides.

 

[cartaphilus]

I don't use it beyond just a basic ESET setup with just few anti exec rules in roaming folders.

I would never use it as a whole household deployment since it's too chatty and I don't want my peeps getting immunized to alerts. Ie. Anti-malware crying wolf one too many times.

 

[Sampei.Nihira]

HIPS were also popular in the 2000s and 2010s.
I used EQS and, if I remember correctly, DW as well.
HIPS only intervened once in my Windows XP, not counting controlled interventions.
Some people thought that HIPS was a cure-all.
Every test was designed to verify the effectiveness of HIPS.
But sooner or later, all HIPS were bypassed, just as SandboxIE, which everyone thought was invulnerable, was also bypassed.

Then EMET came out, and HIPS became less attractive.

 

[cartaphilus]

HIPS were also popular in the 2000s and 2010s.
I used EQS and, if I remember correctly, DW as well.
HIPS only intervened once in my Windows XP, not counting controlled interventions.
Some people thought that HIPS was a cure-all.
Every test was designed to verify the effectiveness of HIPS.
But sooner or later, all HIPS were bypassed, just as SandboxIE, which everyone thought was invulnerable, was also bypassed.

Then EMET came out, and HIPS became less attractive.

One of my first play arounds with home use HIPS was from Wayne @ DiamondCS (long time defunct Australian company) made famous for TDS-3 rootkit scanner.

I was more intrigued with behavior analysis tools like Mamutu/OnlineArmor

 

[Trident]

Behavioiral monitoring is the natural evolution of HIPS, usually divided in events correlation and profiling, and much simpler policy enforcement.

The policy enforcement part is the evolved HIPS.

 

[danb]

And analyzing the HIPS events with LLM's is the next step in the evolution .

 

[cartaphilus]

And analyzing the HIPS events with LLM's is the next step in the evolution .

User: I got infected

AI: wow great astute observation; indeed you are infected! Here are 5 options on how to deal with the infection. Best of luck.

Or AI: that doesn't look like anything to me!
User: terminate all motor functions! Terminate ALLL MOTOR FUNCTIONS!!! AHHH






All of our jobs will be gone in a blink of an AI.


But in all seriousness: Dan your tool is an amazing simple to use analyzer with very strong/advanced output and you translate it to 5 yo terms! Massive way forward indeed when it comes to malware analysis.

 

[n8chavez]

User: I got infected

AI: wow great astute observation; indeed you are infected! Here are 5 options on how to deal with the infection. Best of luck.

Or AI: that doesn't look like anything to me!
User: terminate all motor functions! Terminate ALLL MOTOR FUNCTIONS!!! AHHH






All of our jobs will be gone in a blink of an AI.


But in all seriousness: Dan your tool is an amazing simple to use analyzer with very strong/advanced output and you translate it to 5 yo terms! Massive way forward indeed when it comes to malware analysis.

Why did I read that as a Dalek!?!

 

[Miravi]

I realized that it's impractical to keep up with HIPS alerts and make sound judgements. Once some shady activity finally takes place, let's be honest, I'm probably just going to let it slip through because I already clicked "allow" 37,492 times earlier that day.

Intelligent behavioral inspection software will do a much better job than me at processing this kind of information without the inevitable weariness.

 

[Zero Knowledge]

It's crap and irrelevant technology, there is a reason why it's died and you don't need 100 Comodo threads to see why, as roger_m said the less alerts prompts the better.

It's 2025 and if the alert/prompt is not automated then your just wasting time reacting to them as a home user.

Some people are still stuck in the XP era with security just like some people are stuck in the 80's in regards to culture/music. It's nice to reminisce but move on to better things.

 

[cartaphilus]

It's crap and irrelevant technology, there is a reason why it's died and you don't need 100 Comodo threads to see why, as roger_m said the less alerts prompts the better.

It's 2025 and if the alert/prompt is not automated then your just wasting time reacting to them as a home user.

Some people are still stuck in the XP era with security just like some people are stuck in the 80's in regards to culture/music. It's nice to reminisce but move on to better things.

80s will never die!

 

[cruelsister]

The issue I find with HIPS in general (and not limited to) are:

1). One assumes that the HIPS user is capable enough to read and understand any HIPS popups that occur, and also has enough knowledge to discern the difference between benign and malign.
2). Any HIPS, no matter the level, can be breached (trust me).
3). For those HIPS applications that allow creation of Rules-far too often a User will add rules for either Perceived threats and/or rules against the Malware-Of-The-Month. This will lead to never a ending game of Malware Whac-A-Mole.

 

[Zero Knowledge]

1). One assumes that the HIPS user is capable enough to read and understand any HIPS popups that occur, and also has enough knowledge to discern the difference between benign and malign.

This is the major problem with HIPS. With modern Windows there are so many working parts that it's hard to know what is malicious (malign) and what is not (benign). In the end you just up whitelisting .exe, .ddl and .sys files because you get sick of the popups/prompts every 2 seconds. So if everything that can be malicious and abused is whitelisting then you've already lost. In the end you block LOLbins through a too like Andy Ful's tools or WDAC and block them by WF and basically you've done your best. Your not going to stop a advanced persistent attacker or anyone with the resources to compromise you.

2). Any HIPS, no matter the level, can be breached (trust me).

Agreed 100%. If people can compromise air-gaped networks then they can get around a HIPS config on a home users network.

 

[Antimalware18]

I don't consider HIPS as important in 2025 as say they were in 2010. That being said, I've always been more a fan of a Behavior Blocker (thing Threatfire, I miss that Program) Few Programs nowadays contain one, and the ones that do from what ive seen arent very customizable.

Back to HIPS, In my mind, as windows grows and becomes more complex under the hood I would think the Complexities of alerts from a HIPS could be a point of concern.