Tuesday, May 31, 2011

IGL-Security Guide: System Monitoring

 System Monitoring can be used for computer security or just day to day use of your machine. I keep a lot of System Monitoring tools handy so I thought I would share some with you in my guide series I have been working on. So here are my recommendations for System Monitoring tools:

 Winpatrol

 Winpatrol is a simple to use app that is still very good. Winpatrol "patrols" your machine and then alerts you to new startup programs, services, addons, and a lot of other important areas in your machine. The free version of this product will check your machine every once in a while but the Pro version is constantly running in the background guarding your machine. I highly recommend this app, its great for everyone techie or not.

 Process Explorer

  Although the Task Manger built into Windows is usable it does not have a lot of extras. That is where Process Explorer comes in, I will be honest this is a very powerful task manger. If you want to take a deep look into whats running on your machine Process Explore would be a good tool to use.

ThreatFire

 Now ThreatFire is a little more advance however that does not mean its un-usable. Instead of TF warning you on every action ThreatFire watches the behavior of a file and then warns you when a file is preforming Malware Like Behavior. This really helps cut down on alerts you would you with a program that would warn on every change.

  MJ Registry Watcher

 The Registry plays an important part in the Windows OS. So it simply makes sense Malware will try to edit the registry to cause damage. This is where MJ Registry Watcher comes it, it can warn you of changes when they attempt to happen so you can know what malware is doing and stop it. 
 

1 comment:

  1. the registry watcher looks interesting, thanks for mentioning!

    from similar not mentioned tools i personally also like
    - StartupMonitor http://www.mlin.net/StartupMonitor.shtml
    - System Explorer (in its portable version) http://systemexplorer.net/

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