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I went to the AV-Test Web site at http://www.av-test.org/en/home/. First of all, there is indeed a Norman Security Suite at http://safeground.norman.com/us/home_and_small_office. AV-Test listed Norton under Symantec. Yes, AV-Test evaluated both Norton and Norman.

For home users of Windows XP, Microsoft's Security Essentials has a AV-Test certified seal with a test date in August 2012. For corporate users of Windows XP, Microsoft's Forefront Endpoint Protection has a AV-Test certified seal with a test date also in August 2012. Neither product has the certified seal for Windows 8. But then how many corporate users have actually adopted Windows 8?

Besides AV-Test, there is also ICSA Labs at https://www.icsalabs.com/. ICSA Labs also reports on Norman.

ICSA Labs certifies Microsoft Security Essentials for home users of Windows XP and Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Protection for Windows 7 without any dates indicated. Apparently, ICSA has not certified any anti-virus applications for Windows 8.

I use AVG 2013 Free, which is certified by AV-Test but has not been evaluated by ICSA Labs since 2005 (many versions ago). I also prefer to go to the original sources of information on software -- AV-Test and ICSA Labs in this case -- not to news reports often written by reporters who might not understand the subject.

I've been involved in certifying a firewall to meet ICSA requirements. Let me say that it can only be a good thing to take into account what certifications the product has before using it. This includes FOSS and commercial.

While it's nice that you can review the source of FOSS tools, that gives you no guarantee that the tools are configured appropriately and securely. If you are in an organisation that requires a verifiable degree of security (or as management sees it: level of risk) then using certified products is a no-brainer. No one claims a certified product is absolutely secure, and you should never base a purchase decision purely on the 'does it have a shiny certification logo on the carton?', but when using a certified product you can at least say that X, Y & Z situations are covered. This is especially important in the situation of a breach, where the integrity of logging is important. You don't want your boss screaming at you because the timestamps were wrong or inconsistent, that some data was not logged, etc...

If you are interested, take a look at the criteria for certification for firewalls - http://www.icsalabs.com/technology-program/firewalls/modular-firewall-certification-criteria-version-41

There are a lot of FOSS based products, including the one I worked on, that are ICSA certified. You can have your cake and eat it.

http://www.icsalabs.com/press-release/icsa-labs-study-finds-most-security-products-fail-initial-certification-tests ICSA is owned by Verizon who I work for. MY BS meter is going off. This sounds like a push to sell ICSA approved software. Of course Verizon will offer it.

Also take a look at this firewall-wizards post:

http://honor.icsalabs.com/pipermail/firewall-wizar ds/2004-October/017533.html The question was about securing wireless networks, but a lot of it still applies.

for the past 20 years, having a virus checker was useless on a mac and only served to avoid passing along pc viruses.

Not true. In the olden days, there were a handful of Mac (Classic Mac OS) viruses. Some of them were even malicious, though those were extremely rare. The only ones I ever personally saw were benign, and easily eradicated by simply rebuilding the desktop file on the infected floppy.

From 1989 and well into the 90s (possibly even until 1998 when it was discontinued), the most popular Mac antivirus software was Disinfectant, a free utility written and maintained by one guy-- so that should tell you the non-severity of the Mac virus problem even then. The developer threw in the towel when cross-platform Word macro viruses hit the scene and quickly became too numerous to keep up with.

Since the time of Mac OS 8 or 9 until the present, however, I would agree with your sentiment that the only reason to use Mac antivirus software is as a courtesy to Windows users with whom you exchange files.

~Philly

They also clam that their antivirus software (part of their suite) is ICSA certified. Funny, I don't see their product on ICSA's certification list

Apparently the choir does need some preaching to. Last I checked herehttp://www.viruslist.com/en/viruslistfind?sear ch_mode=virus&words=linux there were a couple of viruses out there for linux and here http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/antivirus /macintosh/archives/macvirus/reference/viruses.htm l for Mac virus. This is not saying that one OS is better than another, just saying don't be so naive. I run both Linux boxes and Windows boxes, and I know, I have to be more careful about where I go with my M$ box.

The Amiga had plenty of viruses. DR-DOS was, I believe, just as susceptible to boot-block viruses as was MS-DOS. Macs have viruses.

Windows viruses are certainly the most common at the moment, but to say that 99.9...% of all viruses are on Windows is inaccurate.

You're right, there were way more than ten. There were, assuming I counted correctly, twenty-two, which I got from this list: http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/antivirus /macintosh/archives/macvirus/reference/viruses.htm l.

The free program was called Disinfectant, and it was available starting in 1989. The fact that it existed didn't stop people from buying the commercial stuff, of course.

Reminds me of Disinfectant.

ars's 2nd tip is to turn off SSID broadcasting to "hide" your network. Anyone with a packet sniffer though can tell you that this really doesn't help hide you at all. In fact, as this paper suggests, it may actually harm the performance of your wireless network.

Here's a very interesting document about why turning OFF your SSID broadcast is bad.

Classic Mac apps had some cool error messages. OS 7.6 had a crash that produced a "Bluets and Granola Bars!" error. OS 7.6.1 went one better with "Just figured out what BETA stands for". This is documented at MacVirus

Course I'm also partial to Amiga's "Guru Meditation error" or the Atari ST's cherry bombs (the number of cherry bombs indicated the severity of the error, leading one writer to comment that if you got six or seven (forget the number) bombs, your Atari might as well jump off the desk and hurl itself into the trash!)

I don't grok Unix. I wanted something in a box with negligible maintenance, I had no time and I had adequate money. My ISDN LanModem and hub were 3Coms, so I bought their baby firewall; OfficeConnect Internet Firewall 25. You'll need the link - 3Com's site is impossible to navigate.

I liked it. Seemed robust, and dead easy to admin. Setting up logging was a little awkward, as it needs to log to a remote external box.

Blew up inside a year (I think it may have been mains-surge related, and the firewall was one of few things I didn't have off the UPS). No one is interested in warranty claims 8-( Maybe I was unlucky.

I found this firewall eval site helpful.

Put GNATbox light on it. It's free (as in beer). Register it and you get 5 internal IP addresses, 200 concurrent connections, stateful packet inspection, email gateway, etc. etc. Pay 50 bucks and you get a DMZ feature added.

Oh, and it's ICSA certified - not something you're going to find in any other nice cheap answer.

Peter Tippet, vice chairman and CTO of the International Computer Security Association (ICSA), gave keynote speach at the '98 International Virus Prevention Conference called "Virus Costs vs. Various Protection Strategies". The presentation was made available for download here (zip file). The presentation download included a spreadsheet with formulae and statistical data to calculate the quarterly or annual cost of virus activity for your enterprise.
Used in conjunction with the ICSA's annual Virus Prevalence Survey (available here) you should be able to update any '97 data and find out what viruses cost you today.
Both the IVPC presentation and the Virus Prevalence Survey are heavy on both statistics and supporting data.

Peter Tippet, vice chairman and CTO of the International Computer Security Association (ICSA), gave keynote speach at the '98 International Virus Prevention Conference called "Virus Costs vs. Various Protection Strategies". The presentation was made available for download here (zip file). The presentation download included a spreadsheet with formulae and statistical data to calculate the quarterly or annual cost of virus activity for your enterprise.
Used in conjunction with the ICSA's annual Virus Prevalence Survey (available here) you should be able to update any '97 data and find out what viruses cost you today.
Both the IVPC presentation and the Virus Prevalence Survey are heavy on both statistics and supporting data.