Software Guide
There is wide range of software available to help improve the security of your computer.
Probably the most important is a quality anti-virus and anti-spyware solution. McAfee Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware
is provided by UC as a free download for faculty, staff, and students.
If you do not already have it installed, please go get it now.
It is very rewarding to see the improvement in security we have completed over the past few years. It is exciting to think what more will achieve now that we have the focus of a department dedicated to information security.
- Michael Calhoun, Assoc. VP UCit Systems & Operations
Free Software from UC
Operating System Updates & Patches
Most operating system software is filled with security holes that hackers and crackers exploit to
illegally gain access to your computer system. The reason for most computer intrusions is because
vendor patches have not been applied. Below, you will find links to software vendors where you can download
available patches.
Other Software
This section discusses a variety of other types of software available and provide links to learn more about them.
- Personal Firewalls
Good firewalls monitor all network traffic both into and out of your computer. They look at every packet that goes through your modem or network card to see if that packet should be allowed to pass.
These are particularly important because they allow you
to control what program are allowed internet access, giving you better control of what happens to your computer. They will ask you if you want MS Outlook to access the internet (probably yes) or if you want to allow access to a program called nukeem.exe (probably no).
A few popular solutions are:
More options, detailed information and reviews of many other options may be found here.
- File Shredders
Shedders will destroy a file from the computer, making recovery impossible. Just deleting a file, even after you have emptied the trash or recycle bin, does not actually remove the file from your system. It just tells your computer that that space is free for reuse. Until it is actually reused, that space still contains your file and that file can be recovered using an undelete tool.
If you have a need to completely destroy a computer file, please contact UC InfoSec for more information.
- Tools and Utilities
This is a collection of tools and links to tools and utilities that may be useful.
Included are
- IP Information
- Get City from IP
- DNS Lookup
- Reverse DNS Lookup
- Whois
- Traceroute
- Spam database lookup
- Ping
- Others
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