Serious Discussion How much is your Security Budget?

[lokamoka820]

0.00, the best software in the world is the free software, and if it is open source too, then it is the perfect software.

 

[Captain Holly]

MS Security/Windows Defender is free, unless you count whatever percentage of my laptop's purchase price was for Defender. Defender works fine and is very effective, plus it integrates very well with Edge, the Windows Firewall, my MS account and other aspects of Windows too. I augment Defender with my MBAM Premium Lifetime License. I think I paid $30.00 for it in 2012 or 2013. Between Defender, MBAM and using the brain I was born with I don't see a need to pay anything for online security.

C.H.

 

[Victor M]

My current budget is $30/yr for the Cisco Talos Snort paid rules. I have a machine running pfsense firewall w/ snort IPS that uses them.

 

[simmerskool]

MS Security/Windows Defender is free, unless you count whatever percentage of my laptop's purchase price was for Defender. Defender works fine and is very effective, plus it integrates very well with Edge, the Windows Firewall, my MS account and other aspects of Windows too. I augment Defender with my MBAM Premium Lifetime License. I think I paid $30.00 for it in 2012 or 2013. Between Defender, MBAM and using the brain I was born with I don't see a need to pay anything for online security.

C.H.

@Captain Holly how do you use mbam premium with MS Defender, is Defender the registered AV and you run mbam in real-time (unregistered)? or only run mbam as 2d opinion scanner? or some other configuration??

 

[Captain Holly]

@Captain Holly how do you use mbam premium with MS Defender, is Defender the registered AV and you run mbam in real-time (unregistered)? or only run mbam as 2d opinion scanner? or some other configuration??

I have active MBAM Premium running alongside WD with MBAM set to not register in the Windows Security Center. WD is my main AV. MBAM runs a system scan once a week. I use the MB Browser Guard extension in Edge and Firefox too.

C.H.

 

[TuxTalk]

Any cheap license for BD on G2A.

 

[Vitali Ortzi]

$0 for security software. I have found that I can impose user-defeating security on Windows by leveraging what native security already exists on Windows Pro.

I suppose that you could say that my annual Security Budget is whatever I paid for the Windows Pro license divided by the number of years that the system is in service.

VPNs are a waste of money given the net benefit in terms of actual security is zero. Many cause problems, all the VPNs will cooperate with law enforcement and security services, and support is generally not very good.

Paid password managers are a waste of money because there are free options that perform very well - better than the paid options.

AdGuard is worth it as long as using its features does not interfere with the system; AdGuard does not work well with a lot of VPNs that have their own DNS filtering. There's many reports across the years about this problem. There are periods of time when the AdGuard VPN conflicts with the AdGuard app itself. That has been an issue at least ten times since the beginning of both AdGuard VPN and AdGuard.

Backup might or not might be worth paying dependent upon what the user needs, but for the most part - again - a waste of money.

Virtual Machine software is free, so don't have to spend 1 Euro there.

Router security is free - so not spending money there.

I suppose my budget - annualized - is about 10 Euros. I spend more in time and effort - but that is no different or more than what I would spend for paid premium products.

So Basically you used pro license to turn it into almost S mode at least in terms of security and usability XD
Well that is definitely more secure then any third party product but good luck giving your setup to a average user and even then he will still be pished or scammed by IT tech scams by manually inserting his private passwords into a web page XD

 

[Vitali Ortzi]

My current setup 0 USD using new trials each time before it expires for software like eset and freeware software like comodo

And DNS , extensions etc are free while giving access to some of the top providers for free


Might actually setup a free sophos home firewall too (free except costs for the hardware)

 

[Vitali Ortzi]

£0 now though I did get CyberLock Lifetime end of last year and AOMEI Lifetime at the start of the year. DefenderUI is free as I won't need Pro with CL. Firewall wise it's either just WF as CL implements Smart Firewall rules or WFC or CFW if I'm experimenting with it.

I have been tempted to get Emsisoft again, I like that it's updated regularly and although it uses 600mb of my ram it doesn't slow down my machine but MD has proven in @Shadowra 's tests as effective. Eset is a bit out of the price range (more than £30ish) but there are offers. Anyway, yeah, we'll see if there's a sale this week but I know I'm quite well protected with CL DefenderUI MD.

Microsoft defender will only improve it has the most intelligence data and a ton of R&D it's just a matter of time till it becomes the best

 

[Vitali Ortzi]

£0 now though I did get CyberLock Lifetime end of last year and AOMEI Lifetime at the start of the year. DefenderUI is free as I won't need Pro with CL. Firewall wise it's either just WF as CL implements Smart Firewall rules or WFC or CFW if I'm experimenting with it.

I have been tempted to get Emsisoft again, I like that it's updated regularly and although it uses 600mb of my ram it doesn't slow down my machine but MD has proven in @Shadowra 's tests as effective. Eset is a bit out of the price range (more than £30ish) but there are offers. Anyway, yeah, we'll see if there's a sale this week but I know I'm quite well protected with CL DefenderUI MD.

High ram usage by av will only slow down your machine if you're low on free ram + the av software doesn't let go of it's ram when the machine is under that stress
Probably a low end machine (low ram etc ) can be a good example to see how the av reacts under stress and you can use an emulator to emulate such an environment

 

[Minimalist]

My current yearly budget is: 25 EUR for Eset, 20 EUR for Macrium and 50 EUR for Mullvad VPN. I like their software and services so I'm willing to support them.

 

[Victor M]

Just upgraded to pfsense hardware firewall = $39.04/yr over 6 yrs.with aforementioned $30/yr for Cisco Talos Snort rules.

The machine running pfsense is a Pentium 3, need newer hardware.

 

[simmerskool]

I have active MBAM Premium running alongside WD with MBAM set to not register in the Windows Security Center. WD is my main AV. MBAM runs a system scan once a week. I use the MB Browser Guard extension in Edge and Firefox too.

C.H.

@Captain Holly thanks, I have one VM setup the same way, wondering if you notice any slowdown with both mbam and msD running in real-time together?

 

[Captain Holly]

@Captain Holly thanks, I have one VM setup the same way, wondering if you notice any slowdown with both mbam and msD running in real-time together?

No slowdowns at all, but I have a newer laptop, it's a Lenovo with 16 GB of ram and a 1TB SSD. It is about a year old. MBAM did cause noticeable slow down my previous laptop, that one was a Lenovo too but it only had 8GB of ram and a 1TB HDD.

C.H.

 

[Victor M]

@Captain Holly I think the cpu matters more when comparing speed. Please supply the cpu model numbers of both. Remember you can't compare Ghz between different models of cpu's, so don't give us that.

 

[Captain Holly]

@Captain Holly I think the cpu matters more when comparing speed. Please supply the cpu model numbers of both. Remember you can't compare Ghz between different models of cpu's, so don't give us that.

The older one is an AMD Ryzen 3 3200U. The newer one is a 12th Generation Intel Core i3. The newer one is a lot faster than the old one but the old one still works except the battery is no good and it has a loose charging port. I don't use the older one very often now but I work from home so I still keep it in my home office in case I need a computer for personal use during the day.

C.H.

 

[bazang]

So Basically you used pro license to turn it into almost S mode at least in terms of security and usability XD

It is locked down even more than S Mode.

Well that is definitely more secure then any third party product but good luck giving your setup to a average user and even then he will still be pished or scammed by IT tech scams by manually inserting his private passwords into a web page XD

That is not the fault of the security configuration. Security cannot cover everything while at the same time cater to productivity and convenience first. It is just not possible.

When it comes to the "average user," the problem is the user. The user is ALWAYS the problem - and by user I mean any person that manages or uses a system.

There is no software that can completely protect ANY user from digitally harming themselves or others.

At some point, one has to leave average users to their own inclinations. Just move on and leave them behind. Because the amount of effort that is required to protect users who don't care, don't know and don't prioritize security is just too much effort, too costly, and impractical.

Security is not software (and configurations). It is a process (that requires knowledge and disciplined habits).

 

[simmerskool]

No slowdowns at all, but I have a newer laptop, it's a Lenovo with 16 GB of ram and a 1TB SSD. It is about a year old. MBAM did cause noticeable slow down my previous laptop, that one was a Lenovo too but it only had 8GB of ram and a 1TB HDD.

C.H.

yeah, I don't really notice any slowdown either with both running real-time (but I think mbam is only a viable combo with msD).

 

[Zero Knowledge]

@bazang and @Zero Knowledge , the browser is the most attacked software, I would suggest adding Sandboxie Plus free to your arsenal.

If someone wants to blow a cool $500,000 to $3,000,000 to exploit Chrome with a RCE+SBX exploit then go ahead. Not that fussed, I'd be pretty chuffed honestly.

Sandboxie is just excess to my needs, not arguing against it's effectiveness but you have to draw a line on what software you use eventually.

 

[Kaffee4Eck]

I don't always spend a lot, but from time to time, I allocate around €50–100 for my network security budget — especially since I need to secure not only PCs but also various services and servers.

Currently, my first line of defense is OPNsense, configured with numerous list-based rules. I'm also using CrowdSec, ZenArmor (IDS/IPS), and the built-in IDS/IPS engine. For ad-blocking across the entire network, I rely on Unbound in combination with AdGuard Home, including custom rewrite rules and more.

Depending on the device and its purpose, I use different antivirus solutions such as ESET, Kaspersky, Symantec Endpoint Protection, or Microsoft Defender.

Naturally, I also maintain regular backups of various machines. For clients and business partners, I currently use Macrium Reflect, while for my own systems, I rely on UrBackup and Time Machine.

The most expensive part has definitely been my servers—both at home and externally hosted. But to be fair, they're not only related to security.