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Simple" security routines will not protect against malice or criminal activity. To secure a large scale network with thousands of users requires some serious effort, and their comes a point where the cost of the security measures (in terms of lost productivity) outweigh the value of whatever they are protecting. Like most engineering it's all about finding the best compromise.

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That was actually the point I was attempting to make. That domestic users, as most home recordists / composers are, are much safer than corporate users. Along with the tongue in cheek I mean belt or braces but very rarely both.

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Success is round the corner. It's also round the bend.

Quote The Elf:

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Quote WaveOnWave:

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it is THE no 1 protection against every IT danger we have.

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I'm sorry - this is blind faith, and misguided.

I was an IT professional for 30 years before my full-time career in audio. The No. 1 protection is backup, backup, backup.

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Having had to rescue data from backups, I'd say it's got to be a combination of both these days. Backups are great... but when you're also backing up the virus, not so great.

I think there's a good case for saying running in a non-admin account on Windows is fairly pointless. It's not like Windows fo Home users has any security worth fussing over. Now if we were talking corporate LAN, or Linux/Mac, that's different.


Edited by Magic Matt (10/02/13 03:06 PM)

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Backups are great... but when you're also backing up the virus, not so great.

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True.

Backups should cover as wide a time-span as practicable. My studio computers can be recovered to anywhere up to 2 years ago. Incremental backup methods make this relatively simple to achieve.

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Quote The Elf:

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Backups should cover as wide a time-span as practicable. My studio computers can be recovered to anywhere up to 2 years ago. Incremental backup methods make this relatively simple to achieve.

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My backup tends to be a full backup of the important business stuff each month, incremental backup daily. They go onto an archive off-site back 2 years. Anything not relevant to the current financial year goes in archive, which just has two backups (one off site) - some of that could be anything up to 10 years old, depending on what it is.

Ok, maybe a little over the top, but storage is dirt cheap these days. I usually do an integrity check on the backups each year. I probably should be using something else other than hard disks, but they work, and are easy to store.

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so what task require you to log on as an admin ?

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That's obvious to man of your intimate familiarity with Windows, surely?

Installing and removing software and drivers, for one -- something which I naturally have to do a great deal as part of my job.

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as another poster asked for: this should give you a login window asking for admin rights

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Most of the time it doesn't, it just says you do not have permission and you have to log off then log back in as an admin role. What you are describing is more like sudo on Linux.

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I very rarely need to actually log off and log back in as Admin. Sometimes I need to right click on an exe or shortcut and choose the option Run as administrator. This can help in some situations where programmes refuse to run otherwise even when they prompt you to enter the Admin password during the process.
The only instance where I recall needing to log in as Admin is if you want to update a driver via Device Manager as there is no option to Run as Admin. It may be possible to right click on an INF file and Run as Admin but since drivers usually come as exes these days I haven’t got around to testing this theory.

Quote Magic Matt:

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Quote The Elf:

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Quote WaveOnWave:

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it is THE no 1 protection against every IT danger we have.

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I'm sorry - this is blind faith, and misguided.

I was an IT professional for 30 years before my full-time career in audio. The No. 1 protection is backup, backup, backup.

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Having had to rescue data from backups, I'd say it's got to be a combination of both these days. Backups are great... but when you're also backing up the virus, not so great.

I think there's a good case for saying running in a non-admin account on Windows is fairly pointless. It's not like Windows fo Home users has any security worth fussing over. Now if we were talking corporate LAN, or Linux/Mac, that's different. In fact, MS is promoting this since NT 4.0 which is their OS from 1996.

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pointless? of course not, Microsoft is even promoting this since their first serious OS: NT 4.0 (released in 1996).

Edited by WaveOnWave (11/02/13 02:07 PM)

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Quote Magic Matt:

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Quote Hugh Robjohns:

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Quote WaveOnWave:

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so what task require you to log on as an admin ?

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That's obvious to man of your intimate familiarity with Windows, surely?

Installing and removing software and drivers, for one -- something which I naturally have to do a great deal as part of my job.

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as another poster asked for: this should give you a login window asking for admin rights

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Most of the time it doesn't, it just says you do not have permission and you have to log off then log back in as an admin role. What you are describing is more like sudo on Linux.

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I very rarely need to actually log off and log back in as Admin. Sometimes I need to right click on an exe or shortcut and choose the option Run as administrator. This can help in some situations where programmes refuse to run otherwise even when they prompt you to enter the Admin password during the process.
The only instance where I recall needing to log in as Admin is if you want to update a driver via Device Manager as there is no option to Run as Admin. It may be possible to right click on an INF file and Run as Admin but since drivers usually come as exes these days I haven’t got around to testing this theory.

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if UAC is on you can even do that without login on and off!

Edited by WaveOnWave (11/02/13 02:11 PM)

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pointless? of course not, Microsoft is even promoting this since their first serious OS: NT 4.0 (released in 1996).

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Microsoft made the OS, so they would. Fact is that any process can easily elevate itself to administrator, bypassing whatever restrictions are on the account you logged in as. That renders the practice pretty useless. I used to do that with old VB programs so they had access to everything - it was about 10 lines of code if I recall correctly.

Running as a restricted user is just giving you a false sense of security on Windows. On a corporate LAN you can still run as Admin on the local machine easily, but elevating permissions on the network is far harder (though still easy compared to Linux or Netware).

Edited by Magic Matt (11/02/13 08:29 PM)

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Quote WaveOnWave:

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pointless? of course not, Microsoft is even promoting this since their first serious OS: NT 4.0 (released in 1996).

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Microsoft made the OS, so they would. Fact is that any process can easily elevate itself to administrator, bypassing whatever restrictions are on the account you logged in as. That renders the practice pretty useless. I used to do that with old VB programs so they had access to everything - it was about 10 lines of code if I recall correctly.

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Not when you have a password for your admin account

Best anti-virus on a dedicated music pc? Take the ethernet cable out. OK increasingly difficult these days with online activation/licence managerds etc, but it can be done, I know because I have using a music pc for some 15 years (Win98, XP, Win7)and not a single virus in all those years! Although I have relented with WIn7, but I connect simply to activate software then I disable the NIC.

For general work I have an old Xeon Quad with WIn7 and Microsoft Defender - 3 years on - no problems at all. Never go to dodgy websites, never open attachments without scanning, even from friends/family (I don't know how effective their AV software is)and immediately delete unsolicited mail especially with attachments and add them to the junk email rule

Quote OneWorld:

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Best anti-virus on a dedicated music pc? Take the ethernet cable out. OK increasingly difficult these days with online activation/licence managerds etc, but it can be done, I know because I have using a music pc for some 15 years (Win98, XP, Win7)and not a single virus in all those years! Although I have relented with WIn7, but I connect simply to activate software then I disable the NIC.

For general work I have an old Xeon Quad with WIn7 and Microsoft Defender - 3 years on - no problems at all. Never go to dodgy websites, never open attachments without scanning, even from friends/family (I don't know how effective their AV software is)and immediately delete unsolicited mail especially with attachments and add them to the junk email rule

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Reading the horror of this thread its no wonder people love their macs!

The horror?

Turn on MSE and get on with life... I don't find that overly scary.

Apples aren't immune to trojans, keyloggers and malware either.

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ScanProAudio & 3XS Audio Systems
ScanProAudio Blog

Quote johnny h:

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Quote OneWorld:

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Best anti-virus on a dedicated music pc? Take the ethernet cable out. OK increasingly difficult these days with online activation/licence managerds etc, but it can be done, I know because I have using a music pc for some 15 years (Win98, XP, Win7)and not a single virus in all those years! Although I have relented with WIn7, but I connect simply to activate software then I disable the NIC.

For general work I have an old Xeon Quad with WIn7 and Microsoft Defender - 3 years on - no problems at all. Never go to dodgy websites, never open attachments without scanning, even from friends/family (I don't know how effective their AV software is)and immediately delete unsolicited mail especially with attachments and add them to the junk email rule

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Reading the horror of this thread its no wonder people love their macs!

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That's the thing with Apple people - they are quite 'delicate drama queens' But.....here we go, yet another thread morphs into an Apple vs PC rant - for goodness sake Appleytes, change the friggin' record will you? or....come up with something useful to the debate, you're getting boring.

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Quote OneWorld:

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Best anti-virus on a dedicated music pc? Take the ethernet cable out. OK increasingly difficult these days with online activation/licence managerds etc, but it can be done, I know because I have using a music pc for some 15 years (Win98, XP, Win7)and not a single virus in all those years! Although I have relented with WIn7, but I connect simply to activate software then I disable the NIC.

For general work I have an old Xeon Quad with WIn7 and Microsoft Defender - 3 years on - no problems at all. Never go to dodgy websites, never open attachments without scanning, even from friends/family (I don't know how effective their AV software is)and immediately delete unsolicited mail especially with attachments and add them to the junk email rule

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Reading the horror of this thread its no wonder people love their macs!

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which horror? I have a fine relation with my PC running Vista.

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Quote johnny h:

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Quote OneWorld:

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Best anti-virus on a dedicated music pc? Take the ethernet cable out. OK increasingly difficult these days with online activation/licence managerds etc, but it can be done, I know because I have using a music pc for some 15 years (Win98, XP, Win7)and not a single virus in all those years! Although I have relented with WIn7, but I connect simply to activate software then I disable the NIC.

For general work I have an old Xeon Quad with WIn7 and Microsoft Defender - 3 years on - no problems at all. Never go to dodgy websites, never open attachments without scanning, even from friends/family (I don't know how effective their AV software is)and immediately delete unsolicited mail especially with attachments and add them to the junk email rule

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Reading the horror of this thread its no wonder people love their macs!

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That's the thing with Apple people - they are quite 'delicate drama queens' But.....here we go, yet another thread morphs into an Apple vs PC rant - for goodness sake Appleytes, change the friggin' record will you? or....come up with something useful to the debate, you're getting boring.

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As opposed to this panic and strife over virus checkers, firewalls, user accounts and ripping the ethernet cable out. Which is really very interesting and totally conducive to the music writing process

I didn't see the thread morph into an Apple debate. This PC user sees just another PC user jumping on someone's head because they realise you need to know what you're doing before you reinvent the wheel by making a square one and claiming it doesn't roll back downhill.

I suppose I'll be accused of raving by any fool bothered by that.

Viruses: Several ways to do the job all valid and the dog knows how to chase the stick. OK?

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Success is round the corner. It's also round the bend.

Quote johnny h:

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panic and strife over virus checkers, firewalls, user accounts and ripping the ethernet cable out. Which is really very interesting and totally conducive to the music writing process

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Panic and strife?!?!? Wha?!

As Pete said - I have a virus checker and it's switched on - end of story. My PC is always connected to the net (and always has been) and I've never had a problem. I just get on with making music!

I have no problem with Macs either, and still use them, but please, let's not make a problem where there isn't one!

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An Eagle for an Emperor, A Kestrel for a Knave.

Come on guys, I think all the pertinent points hace already been made and we're all done here, and rising to johnny h's trolling won't help anyone...

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Speaks volumes......

http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2013/02/15/google-searches-bt-war-and-apple-gets-hacked

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Speaks volumes......

http://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2013/02/15/google-searches-bt-war-and-apple -gets-hacked

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Certainly does, an article that admits its a 'non-story' gets published just because its about apple. Same as with the tiny handful of Apple viruses that get huge publicity. PC viruses and trojans aren't news, they are a way of life.