So you possess an antivirus securing your system, your firewall is up, your browser plug-ins are all up-to-date, and you’re not leaving out any security mends. But how can be rest assured your defense mechanisms are really working as well as you imagine they are? These tools can also be especially utile if you’re aiming to instantly determine how secured someone else’s PC is. They can show you just how much exposed software the PC has installed.
Test Your Antivirus
No, we’re not going to advocate downloading a virus to trial your antivirus program that’s a formula for disaster. If you ever so want to trial your antivirus software, you can use the EICAR test file. The EICAR test file is not an actual virus, it’s merely a text file comprising of a string of benign code that prints the text “EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!” if you execute it in DOS. Nonetheless, antivirus programs are all checked to identify the EICAR file as a virus and react to it simply as they would react to an actual virus.
You can download an EICAR test file from the EICAR website. Nonetheless, you could also make your own EICAR test file by starting a text editor (such as Notepad), copy-pasting the following text into the file, and then saving it:
X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*
Your antivirus program should respond as though you had just produced an actual virus.
Port Scan Your Firewall
If you’re at the backside a router, the router’s network address translation (NAT) feature efficaciously acts as a firewall, keeping other computers on the Internet from associating to your computer. To check that your computer’s software is refuged from the Internet, either with a NAT router or through a software firewall if your computer is linked directly to the Internet – you can use the ShieldsUP! test website. It will execute a port scan of your IP address, finding out whether ports are open or closed at your web address. You want ports to be shut down to protect potentially exposed services from the wild west environment of the open Internet.
Check Browser Plug-ins
Browser plug-ins are now the most general attack, that’s software like Java, Flash, and Adobe’s PDF reader. You should check that you always have the most recent, most up-to-date versions of all your browser plug-ins if you want to play safe online. If you possess any out-of-date plug-ins, you should update them to the latest, protected versions. If you have Java installed at all, you should just uninstall it now only or at the least disable its browser plug-in.
Naturally, this doesn’t account for everything. There’s no way to check your antivirus will arrest every virus ever produced, it won’t since no antivirus is up to the mark. There’s no way to check you won’t fall target to phishingor another social-engineering attack. But these tools will aid you test some of your most significant defenses and check they’re prepared for an attack.
