By now you have (hopefully) protected the PCs in your home. You've shielded them against viruses, spyware, and a host of potential maladies using a range of defenses. But how do you know for sure those protections are the right protections? Except for a glowing icon, how do you know your safeguards are safeguarding anything at all?
That's where Active Security Monitor (ASM) comes into play. A free security diagnostic from AOL, this tool monitors your home network to ensure all the right security functions are in place.
ASM won't actually protect you from anything, but it will help manage your existing protections, and that can be an important thing. From "not enough" security, many home users have gone to the opposite extreme of "too much" — or at least too much to keep track of. With so many firewalls, intrusion detectors, anti-spyware tools, and anti-virus apps, it can become difficult to keep track of the full scope of one's security situation.
ASM simplifies the management of such tools. It continuously monitors your PC and delivers a consolidated overview, reporting on such common applications as a current anti-virus scanner, a firewall, spyware protection, wireless security, and various Windows and Internet Explorer security settings. Perhaps best of all, no AOL membership is required.
ASM will not tell you whether your security apps are working, or how well, but it will tell you whether you have all the appropriate apps in place.
Having reviewed your configurations, the application reports back with an overall security rating of zero to 100, much like a credit score, and offers specific suggestions on how to improve your score. (Step-by-step instructions for plugging security holes usually can be found by clicking the "Improve Score" tab.)
The path toward improvement typically includes recommendations for products, services, and articles that might help you resolve any security vulnerability. While this may sound like a forum for hawking corporate wares, in fact these tips and explanations are almost always straightforward and helpful.
Another handy feature helps users gain a long-term perspective. Presented in graph form, this feature displays a computer's relative score over a period of time, thus helping the user track how well security is being maintained on that machine.
Users may have certain expectations about AOL products. Super easy-to-use and intuitive interface? Absolutely. One of the pleasures of this application is the ease with which one can view and navigate the relevant information.
But what about the frequent expectation that AOL products will be bulky, slow, and a little on the weak side when it comes to actual features? Here ASM far exceeds expectations, with a quick and simple download and installation to go along with product functionality that delivers just as promised. The diagnostic features are right on the money.
Some users have complained that Active Security Monitor identifies problems that aren't there, overlooking existing protections or diagnosing false problems. These problems appear to be scarce and in any case the complaints seem to point to a program that is at times being a little overly cautious. We'd rather have a false positive than miss a genuine problem.
In releasing ASM, AOL has made a strong case for the need for such a program. The company conducted a study with the National Cyber Security Alliance and found that 81 percent of home PCs lack at least one of three critical protections: updated computer virus software, spyware protection, and a secure firewall.
More than half of survey participants either had no anti-virus protection or had not updated the software within the last week, while 44 percent did not have a properly configured firewall and 38 percent lacked any form of spyware protection.
But you're protected, right?
Well, how would you know, really? Perhaps you installed a bunch of staff a while back and it was the right stuff at the time. Antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall, etc. — how can it be that things have gone wrong since then?
It could be that these protections have gone stale. Maybe you missed some essential updates. It could be that some applications were not configured properly to begin with or that they're no longer doing what you thought they would.
Certainly an advanced user is (hopefully) not going to struggle with these issues, but for an average home user the eclectic mix of current protections can present challenges.
To stay on the safe side ASM offers a tool that is free, quick, and easy to use — just how we like our apps.
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