This page contains links to software that we use for security in our office and at home. We have no association with the makers of this software and get nothing for passing this information on to our friends. Use it at your own risk. We've used all of it at some time in the recent past, at least.

Use the free virus scan at the Panda Software website link above to see if your computer has any malware installed.

Trend Micro Housecall - Use this free virus scan to see if your computer has any malware installed.

Panda Cloud Anti-virus software - Free anti-virus software that runs "in the cloud". This software is very good at preventing infections without bogging down your computer. It requires a live internet connection to operate. We are experimenting with this highly-rated free anti-virus software on some of our Windows desktops. If you are sure you have no bad stuff on your computer, this is free and easy. Not recommended if your computer is already infected.

F-Secure Rescue CDIf your computer is infected with malware or viruses of some sort, this is a free tool you should know about. Download the rescue CD image, burn it to a CD, then use it to boot the infected computer. There is a user guide on how to use it. In a nutshell, the CD boots Linux, updates its malware definitions, then kills bad software infecting your computer's hard drive. Then you can reboot your computer normally, update your anti-virus software, and let it scan your hard drive again in the normal fashion to finish the job. This is a real lifesaver at times, as the next alternative is to start from scratch and reinstall all the software on your computer!

You may need one of these to use the brute force disinfection option, which is to remove your infected hard drive from your computer and mount it as an external drive on another clean computer that is secure from infection, disinfecting it there. Use whatever software the secure computer has installed, making sure it is up to date and quite capable at removing in addition to preventing infections. Avira or AVG is OK for this, but for the disinfecting task Panda Cloud Anti-virus is not so good. Many of the commercial, non-free solutions are good for this job.

Microsoft Security Essentials offers another alternative to keep your computer free of virus infections. We haven't tried it yet, but it has reasonable reviews.

Avira Anti-virus software (Free for personal and non-commercial use.) We use this now on some of our personal Windows desktops. It does a good job, but pops up a window once per day inviting you to upgrade to the non-free version. It is rated more highly than AVG by some.

AVG Anti-virus software - Free for personal and non-commercial use. We use this on many of our Windows desktops, and have been using it for some time.

ClamWin - Free anti-Virus software for Windows. High quality, but no automatic scanning! This is not the safest approach for most people.

Gibson Research (Free network security analysis and tools - you need to be a bit more of a geek to know what to do with this stuff.)

FreeOTFE [Free On-The-Fly-Encryption] - Free high quality security software for encrypting important files on your hard drive or flash/thumb drive so that only you can read them - some geek-factor is required to use this software. If you correctly use this on your laptop, you need not worry about its contents if it is stolen or lost.

TrueCrypt - Free high quality security software for encrypting important files on your hard drive or flash/thumb drive so that only you can read them - some geek-factor is required to use this software. If you correctly use this on your laptop, you need not worry about its contents if it is stolen or lost.

Hijack This - Free high quality software for detecting bad programs on a windows computer. This is not at all easy to use unless you are pretty much a geek. If you are a geek, this is really useful when you want to see how badly a friend's computer is infected and start the disinfection process. Can also be used to generate a log that can be sent to someone more knowledgeable.

Steve Schneier's essays on security - Pretty sane advice on security, computer and otherwise, in an insane world. Not lightweight reading. Not particularly Christian.