Danger silver0190 Security Config 2023

[silver0190]

Hi, this is my "safety plan".
Being inexperienced in IT and having a not very high-performance notebook, I wanted to get advice.
Where can it be improved?
I also wanted to ask you: is there a program that tests the vulnerability of a computer, simulating hacker attacks, and so on?

 

[harlan4096]

@silver0190 :

• Set UAC to Always Notify
• FireWall Security Disabled?
• Secure DNS is always welcome.
• No PassWord Manager?
• No File and Photo backup? Nor System recovery?

 

[silver0190]

@silver0190 :

• Set UAC to Always Notify
• FireWall Security Disabled?
• Secure DNS is always welcome.
• No PassWord Manager?
• No File and Photo backup? Nor System recovery?

1) Ok, i do
2) I have FireWall in Bitdefender, do I have to activate the Windows one too? Doesn't this create conflict?
3) What are these DNS? Are they useful for privacy or security? Are they some kind of VPN?
4) No, I don't use any Password Manager. I prefer the good old "pen and paper"
5) No, everything is off. Should I do cryptography?

 

[Shadowra]

1) Ok, i do
2) I have FireWall in Bitdefender, do I have to activate the Windows one too? Doesn't this create conflict?
3) What are these DNS? Are they useful for privacy or security? Are they some kind of VPN?
4) No, I don't use any Password Manager. I prefer the good old "pen and paper"
5) No, everything is off. Should I do cryptography?

1. Good. UAC is very useful for preventing changes to Windows made by yourself or by malware.
2. If you’re using Bitdefender, keep Bitdefender’s firewall. Just update your topic by selecting that your security suite includes a firewall.
3. No, it’s not a VPN! A secure DNS will prevent your internet service provider from reading your DNS queries. This adds privacy, and some DNS servers can also protect you from phishing or block ads. I recommend NextDNS, Cloudflare, or Quad9.
4. It’s a choice, but I still recommend a password manager that can generate secure passwords for you. Bitwarden is a reliable option.
5. Nothing to do with cryptography. Backing up your OS or your data is always strongly recommended, especially if you ever fall victim to a Ransomware CryptoLocker attack or experience a hard drive failure. There are free utilities like Aomei or Macrium Reflect for this purpose.

 

[silver0190]

1. Good. UAC is very useful for preventing changes to Windows made by yourself or by malware.
2. If you’re using Bitdefender, keep Bitdefender’s firewall. Just update your topic by selecting that your security suite includes a firewall.
3. No, it’s not a VPN! A secure DNS will prevent your internet service provider from reading your DNS queries. This adds privacy, and some DNS servers can also protect you from phishing or block ads. I recommend NextDNS, Cloudflare, or Quad9.
4. It’s a choice, but I still recommend a password manager that can generate secure passwords for you. Bitwarden is a reliable option.
5. Nothing to do with cryptography. Backing up your OS or your data is always strongly recommended, especially if you ever fall victim to a Ransomware CryptoLocker attack or experience a hard drive failure. There are free utilities like Aomei or Macrium Reflect for this purpose.

Thanks for your advice. What else would you improve? That is, being able to actually say that I have my computer protected from any type of attack, what am I missing?

 

[Shadowra]

Thanks for your advice. What else would you improve? That is, being able to actually say that I have my computer protected from any type of attack, what am I missing?

First, UAC set to Always Notify.
Next, use secure DNS; it is highly recommended.
Also, use backup software; I recommend doing backups once a month.
Additionally, use a second scanning software like Malwarebytes or Kaspersky and scan your computer once a month.
In Bitdefender, check if you have enabled Ransomware remediation

 

[CyberTech]

4) No, I don't use any Password Manager. I prefer the good old "pen and paper"

Also backup as double paper? just in case

 

[Victor M]

@Shadowra, Macrium Reflect is no longer free. And in my opinion only doing backups once a month is too long. Lets say you are working on a school assignment, if your hard drive malfunctions, you could lose a week or two worth of work. I would say to do a drive image backup once a month, and do weekly backups of only your data. Corporations do daily backups of the servers holding everybody's work, we should try our best to imitate them. Their employee's work cost money to duplicate. Our personal work takes valuable time to re-create - and sometimes it may not even be possible to recreate.

 

[Digmor Crusher]

@Shadowra, Macrium Reflect is no longer free. And in my opinion only doing backups once a month is too long. Lets say you are working on a school assignment, if your hard drive malfunctions, you could lose a week or two worth of work. I would say to do a drive image backup once a month, and do weekly backups of only your data. Corporations do daily backups of the servers holding everybody's work, we should try our best to imitate them. Their employee's work cost money to duplicate. Our personal work takes valuable time to re-create - and sometimes it may not even be possible to recreate.

It depends on the user and what they use their computer for, I do backups about 2 or 3 times a year. I don't install programs frequently or use my computer for any work related tasks nor do I have a bunch of data that needs to be updated/saved. Regular computer user here who has no desire to update more frequently as it would be useless. Your mileage may vary or course.

 

[Jengo]

It depends on the user and what they use their computer for, I do backups about 2 or 3 times a year. I don't install programs frequently or use my computer for any work related tasks nor do I have a bunch of data that needs to be updated/saved. Regular computer user here who has no desire to update more frequently as it would be useless. Your mileage may vary or course.

Same here, i love clean installs and my data is in the cloud.

 

[Xeno1234]

• Install Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool and Norton Power Eraser
• Remove Malwarebytes and replace it with the browser extension
• Whenever you download a Suspicious file, utilize online sandboxes such as Kaspersky Opentip or Sophos Intelix. These analyze files deeply, monitoring behavior and structure, and determines if they are malicious or not. Also use VirusTotal.

 

[wat0114]

And in my opinion only doing backups once a month is too long. Lets say you are working on a school assignment, if your hard drive malfunctions, you could lose a week or two worth of work.
.

A school assignment or similar can be backed up on its own to the cloud or external usb/hdrive, for example. It doesn't have to be backed up as part of an entire drive image

 

[silver0190]

Hi everyone, I've made some slight changes.
I actually did a complete formatting, waiting to change my laptop around the Christmas period.

- Installation of Windows 10 with the respective updates (unfortunately my computer is too old to accept Windows 11);
- Confirmation of Bitdefener Total Security, taking advantage of the 180-day free trial (when I change PC, I will probably switch to Kaspersky Plus);
- Confirmation of Malwarebytes in offline mode to avoid conflicts;
- Firefox confirmed with the addition of uBlock Origin and Malwarebytes Browser Guard.
- Added Chrome browser where I installed uBlock Origin, Malwarebytes Browser Guard and Windscribe VPN extensions. Windscribe VPN seems to me to be the best free browser VPN of all. Even though I'm not very convinced about VPNs, I could use it in exceptional cases (for example it came in handy for downloading the 180 days version of Bitdefender). Oh, unfortunately I noticed that UBlock Origin no longer works with Youtube, I hope a new version comes out to solve this problem.
I don't know if this can make me 100% safe from external attacks, but I think it can be a good starting point.
Is it improvable? Probably yes, but I also have to deal with a computer that is no longer very young.

At the moment I was thinking of adding some other "portable" anti-malware, light ones that can still make their contribution without weighing down the system.
I was also thinking about citgraphy, but I have no experience with that.
Is encryption only useful in case of physical theft or also when a hacker has remote access to the device?
And if so, by encrypting the disk the hacker has no chance of stealing my data?

One important thing: the hardware-level firewall!
Unfortunately I have a router-modem assigned by the ISP, so I don't know how effective it can be.
Also during the Christmas period I would like to change, I have seen that many speak well of ASUS and FritzBox. These are devices that can cost up to $300, I hope they are excellent shields.

 

[SumTingWong]

Hi everyone, I've made some slight changes.
I actually did a complete formatting, waiting to change my laptop around the Christmas period.

- Installation of Windows 10 with the respective updates (unfortunately my computer is too old to accept Windows 11);
- Confirmation of Bitdefener Total Security, taking advantage of the 180-day free trial (when I change PC, I will probably switch to Kaspersky Plus);
- Confirmation of Malwarebytes in offline mode to avoid conflicts;
- Firefox confirmed with the addition of uBlock Origin and Malwarebytes Browser Guard.
- Added Chrome browser where I installed uBlock Origin, Malwarebytes Browser Guard and Windscribe VPN extensions. Windscribe VPN seems to me to be the best free browser VPN of all. Even though I'm not very convinced about VPNs, I could use it in exceptional cases (for example it came in handy for downloading the 180 days version of Bitdefender). Oh, unfortunately I noticed that UBlock Origin no longer works with Youtube, I hope a new version comes out to solve this problem.
I don't know if this can make me 100% safe from external attacks, but I think it can be a good starting point.
Is it improvable? Probably yes, but I also have to deal with a computer that is no longer very young.

At the moment I was thinking of adding some other "portable" anti-malware, light ones that can still make their contribution without weighing down the system.
I was also thinking about citgraphy, but I have no experience with that.
Is encryption only useful in case of physical theft or also when a hacker has remote access to the device?
And if so, by encrypting the disk the hacker has no chance of stealing my data?

One important thing: the hardware-level firewall!
Unfortunately I have a router-modem assigned by the ISP, so I don't know how effective it can be.
Also during the Christmas period I would like to change, I have seen that many speak well of ASUS and FritzBox. These are devices that can cost up to $300, I hope they are excellent shields.

Invest in a 1TB external hdd for offline backup. You can use free backup software like aomei free backupper or minitool shadow maker free.

 

[silver0190]

Invest in a 1TB external hdd for offline backup. You can use free backup software like aomei free backupper or minitool shadow maker free.

Hi, thanks for your input. Offline backup is useful in case my computer gets infected without losing data, right?

For the rest, based on my requests, do you have any other suggestions? Thanks again.

 

[harlan4096]

@silver0190 :

• Set UAC to Always Notify
• FireWall Security Disabled?
• Secure DNS is always welcome.
• No PassWord Manager?
• No File and Photo backup? Nor System recovery?

Check these ones

 

[CyberTech]

Oh, unfortunately I noticed that UBlock Origin no longer works with Youtube, I hope a new version comes out to solve this problem.

We have updates about YT ad-blocker problem thread they give us updates when new come out.

 

[silver0190]

Check these ones

Hi Harland, yes i did number 1 and number 2 (Bitdefender Total Security has got Firewall too).

Regarding DNS, some people have told me that I can avoid it unless I want to access sites banned by my government. Fortunately I don't have these problems in my country.
Is DNS an extra layer of protection against hacker attacks? If yes then I might change my mind.

Regarding the Password Manager, as I said last time, I continue to use my old agenda (it's true, it's a bit inconvenient, but at least I know that my passwords are safe inside the drawer).

 

[harlan4096]

What about System Recovery solution and/or backup data, at least, in external device?

 

[silver0190]

What about System Recovery solution and/or backup data, at least, in external device?

Yes, i did it. I saved important and personal files in external device.
Except Password manager and DNS i did everything. Do you think my security it can be improved?

There are other antispyware/antimalware i can install, like Hitman and RogueKiller. Do you think they are necessary?