Tuesday, July 27, 2010

PSI - Software Security Scanner

Photograph of Steve Gibson of grc.comImage via Wikipedia
This software by security firm Secunia, and recommended by security professional Steve Gibson, from GRC.com, is FREE for home use.  The software looks at your installed software and will notify you of old, vulnerable software so that you can patch it or remove it if you don't use it any longer.  Just one more tool in the toolbox for protecting your self from bad software and/or identity theft.

PSI - Consumer - Products
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2 comments:

  1. CJ RippleJuly 27, 2010 at 12:13 PM

    Approach with caution.

    Be careful while using this:
    1) false positives: sometimes it registers something needing updating that doesn't. This can particularly happen when it told you to do an update, you performed the update, and it still registers as needing one.

    2) incorrect/invalid updates: some apps may get incorrectly updated or the update is not valid/required. For example, you can ignore updates for unused software such as Internet Explorer. Another example - you have a portable application that is listed as needing an update. If you let Secunia do the update, it may replace a portable .exe with an install .exe, resulting in incorrect / invalid update. Recommend running Secunia to check what needs updating but then performing the updates manually.

    3) memory management: earlier versions of Secunia were memory hogs. May still be an issue. Recommend not running at start-up. Run as part of a maintenance schedule and be aware that when its running, it will bog your system down. Once done, shut it down and continue working as normal.
    ~~
    Just my $0.02 worth. :)

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  2. testJuly 28, 2010 at 12:52 PM

    Agreed.. I found this to be true as well. Still if you use it as a tool its better than going through your list of products one by one and looking up if there are issues or not.

    I'm using it like you said, run it go do the updates for the products I use (and maybe uninstalling those I don't use) then shutting it down. May schedule it to run weekly, so as not to wait too long if there is a serious vulnerability.

    Plus listening to Security Now (www.grc.com/sn) helps me stay current on major threats, really like that podcast.

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