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Cheapskate 2: The Sequel
A guide to free and essential security tools for education
9/12/2008
A month and half ago I asked a group of higher education security officers that I know and respect to identify their five favorite free security software packages. Based on those responses, I wrote my Aug. 8 Campus Security newsletter column, A Cheapskates Guide to Free Security Software.Responses continued to come in after the column was published. Some just echoed previous favorites, but other responses lifted "worthy of a closer look" picks to contender status. And almost a dozen new packages emerged. Hence, "Cheapskate 2: The Sequel."
The Winners Platform
With the new votes in, the winners on the platform stay the same. Nessus, a vulnerability scanner; NMAP, a port scanner; and SNORT, an intrusion detection system, continue to dominate the list of "most useful." For a complete description of these packages, see last month's column.
The New Contender: ClamAV
After the new responses came in, one package emerged that is now almost as popular as those on the winner's podium. ClamAV is an open source antivirus software toolkit for Unix and Windows operating systems and is particularly useful for e-mail virus scanning on e-mail gateways. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License and is part of Sourcefire, the maker of the popular SNORT intrusion detection product.
Versions are available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows operating systems. Conventional wisdom is that there are few viruses on Linux or Mac platforms, so why fret about antivirus software. But what happens if they are being used as a mail server or are forwarding mail to a Windows machine?
ClamAV has three key components: freshclam, clamscan, and sigtool. Freshclam is the tool that downloads the latest virus updates from the Internet. Clamscan is the tool that actually checks files to see if they contain a virus. And sigtool verifies the digital signature of the virus database to verify its validity.
For people who don't have a copy of ClamAV installed on their computer or just want to try it out, there is an online version of ClamAV that can be used to check small files, less than 500 KB, for malicious content. I tried it out with a couple of files that I knew to be clean and didn't get any false positives.
Prospects
Eight packages jumped from the "Worthy of a Closer Look" to "Prospect" status, and one dark horse made the jump from unmentioned. The two packages leading the pack of new competitors are:
Recommended Reading
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