*ProteanThread* said:
does it make sense to use all 3 or is it simply a waste of computer
resources ?
Since I have Spybot and SpywareGuard, I saw no reason to add duplicate
functionality and consume more resources with WinPatrol. However,
WinPatrol does have a couple of nice features, like monitoring a change
to registry and hosts file. The rest of WinPatrol duplicates functions
already available in the OS. Rather than use WinPatrol, I've started to
use PrevX which is an intrusion protection system (IPS). Abtrusion
seems a bit dated and doesn't check when a second unauthorized program
uses a previously authorized program, and System Safety Net (SSM) has a
ridiculously slow web site, provide a better sandbox than Abtrusion, but
just doesn't seem to be what I want. I've heard that both Abtrusion and
SSM will impact the performance of your computer. I've been testing
PrevX for about a week and, so far, haven't experienced a noticeable
degrade in performance. Of couse, IPS schemes are only as good as the
expertise of the user since all security invariably resorts to actions
performed by the user. A prompt telling you that a process is accessing
a restricted registry security attribute and you just blindly saying Yes
to allow it obviates the usefullness of the alert. I've also seen users
of Ad-Aware and Spybot just go blindly letting those products make
changes without investigating what the hell they propose to change, and
then wonder why their browser or some other program doesn't work
thereafter.