Comodo for the Trusted Internet

I adore Comodo Firewall. I have it installed on all five computers here and it is the best firewall I have ever used. And believe me, I’ve used them all. I highly recommend Comodo for its reliability, usability, and most importantly, its security. Comodo is proving once again it’s an excellent company with innovative ideas; Comodo has recently released their brainchild, the Trusted Internet. This is from their website:

This is where every digital interaction, every online interaction will include a new layer of security and trust enabled by an entire infrastructure designed to help us create mutual and real time trust. In a Trusted Internet, we can find what we want online without wasting our time with untrustworthy merchants. We can shop far more efficiently because we can verify the site’s credibility and business practices - immediately.

And with a Trusted Internet, we will be able to do things we can’t even try to do today. With a Trusted Internet, our PCs will automatically be able to find products or information we want from reputable, authenticated merchants and “subject matter experts”. Our computers will be able to vigorously and proactively defend our identities ensuring, in real time, that our information is safe and has not been compromised. But most fundamentally it means that we will all able to connect with each other with full confidence that we can create trust online when and where we need it.

Interesting. This news comes at a time when security breaches and theft has been in the news (again). Comodo’s idea is different than the other kinds of PC security plans we’ve seen, which rely heavily on consumers’ ability to pay for security programs, and on consumers’ knowledge of security measures. New computer users are not very knowledgeable of all the threats and how to prevent them, which accounts for the enormous spread of malicious software and the degradation of the Internet experience as a whole. Comodo intends to change this by turning the Internet security system on its head– that is, treating PC security as a right, not as a priviledge.

To reach this state, we intend to change behavior and help people move from not using PC security because they can’t afford it to using PC security because we give away it away for free. We intend to change people’s low expectation of not being able to authenticate anything online to being able to authenticate everything online - identities, content and even a site’s legitimacy.

This is an amazing concept to me; overall I think it a good thing. However, will this be the end to Internet privacy, to Internet anonymity? Does the answer to PC security– across the board– mean a centralized Internet security hub  or system?

Comodo is certainly a company to watch. I love their firewall, of course, and they have outstanding antivirus and email software. This company is known for its creativity and innovation. It will be interesting to see how this Trusted Internet develops among PC users and other software companies.

What do you think? Do like the idea of a Trusted Internet? Do you think the Internet is ready for something like this?

If it does something to decrease the massive comment spam I get on my blogs, I’m all for it!

Firewalls

Every computer needs a good firewall. A few years ago, there used to be a few really good performance firewalls that were free. They seem harder to come by.

I used to use ZoneAlarm (and one computer still has it). The program worked so well for a few years, then they were bought out by a big software group in Israel. ZoneAlarm went through some changes, and I found that the performance went downhill. My computers crashed constantly, and frequently the firewall wouldn’t even start up, and I had to reboot. It was more trouble than it was worth. So I started shopping around.

I went to Sunbelt Kerio next. This firewall was OK. It worked for me for a while, but then suddenly got sluggish and kept crashing on the computers where I had it installed. Maybe an updat problem? Well, after countless hours tinkering and never able to solve the problem, I moved on to another firewall. [If you download Kerio, they give you the "pro" paid version for the first 30 days, then the program reverts to a basic free version. Firewall protection for both pro and free are the same.]

I am presently using Comodo on two computers. It seems to be working OK. It also does not hog my systems’ resources, which is a real plus for me. I’d hesitated using it, because I’d heard that it was very difficult to install and use. I haven’t found it any harder than the others (Kerio was the easiest, I thought), although there is a “learning curve” as there is with any big program. At any rate, I am satisfied with Comodo so far, although I have been keeping a list of second choices in case this one fails. So far, so good.

Outpost Agnitum is another free firewall that I have heard good reviews from. I’ve looked into Jetico because I heard good things about that, too, but have not tried it.