I am an Internet security freak, and with good reason. The Internet today presents constantly evolving security risks to computers, and operating systems, that at times seem to me like science fiction.
Consider; every day there are increasingly more stories about computer viruses, adware, spyware, hackers, spam, denial of service attacks, phishing, vishing and other Internet frauds – so much so that these stories have become commonplace in the news.
The relentless evolution of these increasingly more powerful and destructive attacks against home computer systems has disclosed a gaping hole; a vulnerability to zero-day threats in many users’ Internet security defenses.
Zero-day threats are those that are defined as malware that has been written and distributed to take advantage of system vulnerabilities, before security developers can create and release counter measures. Without tools that will identify and eliminate these threats to your computer, you run the risk of infection.
A powerful free tool, ThreatFire from PC Tools – the developers of the highly regarded Spyware Doctor, blocks malware (including zero-day threats) by analyzing program behavior (heuristics), instead of relying only on a signature based database. ThreatFire works together with your signature based security applications to increase the effectiveness of your total security arsenal.
When ThreatFire detects a behavior based threat, it goes into analysis overdrive by comparing the threat against its signature database; those threats that are recognized by the database are quarantined immediately.
Unrecognized threats, or unrecognized behaviors, are assigned a calculated risk level (set by the user), at which point the user has the option of confirming, or blocking the action.
A good example of the effectiveness of this application was made clear to me, recently, when I was checking all of the ports on my home Windows machine, and ThreatFire immediately advised me that the Port Checker was attempting to send email from port 25.
Of course it actually wasn’t, it was simply opening it for testing purposes. But if this port was being opened, and was being used by malware, ThreatFire would have identified this danger by its behavior, and given me the necessary warning.
Fast facts:
Immediately Effective with No Complicated Set Up
Proactive Defense against Both Known and Unknown Threats
PC Tools AntiVirus Included for On-demand Scanning
Quarantine and Permanently Remove Threats from Your System
Rootkit Scanner Seeks Out Deeply Hidden Files, Objects and Registry Keys
View Detailed Process Information on All Running Processes
Complementary to Your Existing Antivirus Software
Advanced Custom Configuration Options and Rules Settings
Virtually No Impact on System Performance
More Technical Details Provided on Alerts
Continually Improving Protection Technology
Free email and web-based technical support
Absolutely Free
I highly recommend ThreatFire as a critical component in your overall Internet security toolbox.
System Requirements: Windows XP, Windows Vista, (It works very well on my Windows 7 (Beta) system.
Download at: ThreatFire
Bill Mullins' Weblog - Tech Thoughts 
It is not often that I refer to something as “must have”, but an anti-malware program capable of “heuristic detection” (sometimes called “active shielding”) is one of those things.
Threatfire is not only free for personal use, but one of the better (best?) of such programs. I have found it to be compatible with most other anti-malware programs, so I add it as an additional “layer” of protection against the threats we face everyday while simply browsing the Internet.
I have been a fan since it was called “CyberHawk”… a few years ago, now.
Hey TechPaul,
Great comment – very informative.
Bill
i have this program at work but for some reason, it doesn’t want to play nice here on my home system.
Threatfire is a HIPS type program. HIPS stands for host-based intrusion prevention system, though the concept is also referred to as IPS or intrusion prevention. They have only arrived on the scene during the past couple of years. I have tried many of them and Threatfire is one of the best. Very easy to use and unlike some of this genre, it doesn’t bother the daylights out of you confrim rules. Some HIPS type systems can be daunting to learn and/or use.
While some of these are referred to as firewalls or antivirus, others to check out include Drive Sentry, DefenseWall, ProcessGuard, Mamutu and of course, WinPatrol
I have to say, it is sad where things are: anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewall, HIPs … .
Thanks for this Jo.
Bill