30+ Free Security, Encryption, Firewall and Antivirus Apps for Windows
It’s hard to maintain a secure, virus-free Windows set-up. The Internet is like a minefield, where a poorly protected computer can become infected by all sorts of virii or allow malicious individuals to tinker with your hard drive’s contents, or worse, your operating system itself.
Don’t waste any time getting your Windows computer secured. You don’t need to shell out hundreds of dollars to do this — and if you have a computer that’s not secured already, you may be unaware that not all free software is malicious. In fact, free, open source software makes up a huge chunk of the software ecosystem today, Firefox being one prevalent example.
Which reminds me—if you’re using Internet Explorer, the first step is to grab Firefox, get rid of IE, and come back to this page in your new browser.
Security isn’t about blocking malicious actions, it’s about keeping your data safe. While much of that is about keeping virii or hackers out, it’s also about keeping backups so hardware failure, natural disasters or malicious attacks don’t destroy your primary copy for good.
1. TrueCrypt – free open source disk encryption that works in real-time.
2. GnuPG – a free open source alternative to PGP, the public key encryption software.
3. Steganos Locknote – allows you to encrypt your sensitive data such as bank account details and account passwords as Locknotes.
4. AntiVir is anti-virus software that features a resident background monitor and a manual hard drive scanner.
5. AVG Free features a resident background monitor, manual hard drive scanner, continuous email scanner, and the ability to repair files affected by virii.
6. avast! is a free anti-virus comparable to AVG, though it requires you register an account with the company in order to use the software.
7. ZoneAlarm Firewall is an effective stand-alone program including the firewall component of the larger commercial offering, ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite.
8. Filseclab Personal Firewall Professional Edition is another free personal firewall, albeit with a somewhat contradictory name.
9. Windows Privacy Tools is a collection of apps for digital encryption and content signing. Multilingual.
10. Online Armor Personal Firewall (Free Edition) is a free personal firewall alternative to Online Armor’s commercial applications.
11. Cryptainer LE is free 128-bit encryption software from Cypherix.
12. Comodo Firewall Pro is a free personal firewall with a built-in anti-virus scanner.
13. Adeona is a free open source application for tracking your stolen laptop.
14. RISING Antivirus is free anti-virus software with resident background monitoring and on-demand scanning.
15. WIPFW is a packet filtering and account firewall based on FreeBSD’s IPFW.
16. CryptoExpert 2008 Lite protects your data by creating files that serve as encrypted virtual disks.
17. Comodo doesn’t just offer a free firewall, it offers a free virus-squasher too.
18. PC Tools offers a free anti-virus application among its group of commercial programs.
19. E4M is a free, open source encryption application. While it’s no longer supported by the developer, it is still available for download.
20. SoftPerfect Personal Firewall is another free network firewall with user-defined rules for blocking or accepting incoming connections.
21. Darik’s Boot and Nuke is a boot disk that’ll allow you to securely erase your hard drives, ensuring nobody can recover your credit card details after they find your drive at the dump.
22. Secure Delete allows you to securely delete a file or folder (rather than your whole hard drive) by trashing your selection and then overwriting it with random data, making it unrecoverable.
23. Dubaron DiskImage is a hard drive backup and partition restore application.
24. Forensic Aquisition Utilities includes tools to perform a secure system wipe so that data becomes unrecoverable.
25. Jetico Personal Firewall is a free personal firewall that’s better than most other options if you have an older system, that is, earlier than Windows XP.
26. Eraser is a secure data eraser for all Windows operating systems and even DOS.
27. SelfImage allows you to make an exact copy of your hard drive in a disk image for later backup.
28. SDelete is a free secure delete application for the command line from Microsoft themselves.
29. SunbeIt Personal Firewall is the rebranded version of the very popular Kerio Personal Firewall (there’s a free and a commercial version).
30. Autoclave, while no longer supported by its developer, is still useful because it’s a secure disk wiper that you can run from a floppy disk.
WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY
Joel Falconer
Offering a unique perspective and insight on productivity based on his experience as a writer, musician, family man and manager, Joel Falconer has been published online and off, and brings to Lifehack's readers practical advice you can use to be more efficient and effective.
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Comments
Darren says on August 11th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
> about keeping virii or hackers out
The plural of “virus” is “viruses”. Saying “virii” makes you sound like a douche that only thinks he knows Latin. (see http://tinyurl.com/5zye3t)
You might also be interested to find that ClamAV is available as a Portalbe App that can be run from a portable disk without installation. See http://portableapps.com
Joel Falconer says on August 12th, 2008 at 1:05 am
I was always told otherwise by journalism professors back in the day. :) Thanks for the interesting reference, I’ll use the correct spelling in future.
Dan Esparza says on August 12th, 2008 at 7:43 am
You totally forgot about KeePass: http://keepass.info/
-D
Mark says on August 12th, 2008 at 9:58 am
I have used several and see a few new one to check out. I this keypass should potentially by on your list: http://keepass.info/ I use it daily and it is cross platform static binary.
Thank you,
mark
Menu Inicio says on August 12th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
[...]Link: LikeHack
En Lifehack ponen una lista de 30 programas gratuitos para la PC.
Sandarenu says on August 12th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I use Avast anti virus and Comodo firewall. They worked wonderfully well for me and protected me from viruses in number occasions.
armando says on September 2nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Here’s a good donationware (free but accepts donations ;) ), very convenient and VERY secure small application for keeping encrypted notes : http://www.donationcoder.com/S.....r/fSekrit/
As the web site says (DonationCoders, a GREAT resource for software — with a forum, etc.):
“The real advantage of fSekrit is that notes are truly self-contained; the editor program and your note are merged together into a tiny self-contained program file, removing the need to install a special application to view your data.
This makes fSekrit ideal for keeping encrypted notes on, for example, USB flash drives.
Another advantage of using fSekrit is that your un-encrypted data is never stored on your harddisk. With a traditional encryption utility you would have to decrypt your file to disk, view or edit it, and then re-encrypt it, and unless you use secure file wiping tools, it would be a trivial matter for someone to to retrieve your un-encrypted data, even though you have deleted it. This can’t be done with fSekrit, though, since it never stores your un-encrypted data on disk.
fSekrit uses very strong encryption (256-bit AES/Rijndael in CBC mode) to ensure that your data is never at risk.
Self contained fSekrit note files are tiny! Only 60k plus the size of your text.”