ESET was founded in 1992 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Its flagship product Smart Security has an installed base of over 9% amongst PC users.
ESET was founded in 1992 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Its flagship product Smart Security has an installed base of over 9% amongst PC users. The product is built for combating banking Trojans, Android threats, Mac Defender, BlackHat SEO and social engineering threats and is an integrated solution of antivirus, antispyware, antispam and personal firewall modules. One of its latest features is its unique cloud-based early warning technology called Live Grid. We take a look at the main features of Version 5.0.
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Setting up the solution
The setup menu is the main menu of Eset Smart Security solution. It consists of the following primary options: Computer, Network, Web-email and Parental control. Computer protection setup allows you to enable or disable the following components: Real-time file system protection, Document protection, HIPS, and Gamer mode. The Network section allows you to enable or disable the personal firewall. The Web and Email protection setup allows you to enable or disable web access protection, email client protection and antispam protection. The Parental control section allows you to enable or disable parental controls.
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Cloud based advanced warning
ESET Live Grid is an advanced warning system against emerging threats based on reputation. Utilizing real-time streaming of threat-related information from the cloud, ESET virus lab keeps the defences up-to-date for a constant level of protection. User can check the reputation of running processes and files directly from the program’s interface or contextual menu with additional information available from ESET Live Grid. The ESET Live Grid collects information about a computer related to newly-detected threats. This information may include a sample or copy of the file in which the threat appeared, the path to that file, the filename, the date and time, the process by which the threat appeared on the computer and information about the OS. By default, ESET Smart Security is configured to ask before submitting suspicious files for detailed analysis to ESET‘s Virus Lab. Files with certain extensions such as .doc or .xls are always excluded.
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Excluding known SSL certificates
For SSL communication to work properly in your browsers, it is essential that the root certificate for ESET, be added in the list of known root certificates. In some cases, the certificate cannot be verified using the Trusted Root Certification Authorities store. This means that the certificate is self-signed by someone and considering this certificate as trusted is not always a risk. If the Ask about certificate validity option is set, the user will be prompted to select an action to take when encrypted communication is established. An action selection dialog will be displayed, where you can decide to mark the certificate as trusted or excluded.
You can set the Block communication that uses the certificate option to always terminate an encrypted connection to the site that uses the unverified certificate. In addition to the integrated Trusted Root Certification Authorities store where ESET Smart Security stores trusted certificates, you can create a custom list of trusted certificates. The Excluded certificates section contains certificates that are considered safe. The content of encrypted communications utilizing the certificates in the list will not be checked for threats.
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Network traffic regulation
The Personal firewall controls all network traffic to and from the system. This is accomplished by allowing or denying individual network connections based on specified filtering rules. It provides protection against attacks from remote computers and enables blocking of some services. It also provides antivirus protection for HTTP, POP3 and IMAP
protocols. Personal firewall configuration can be found in the Setup pane after clicking on the Network title. It allows you to adjust the filtering mode, rules and detailed settings.
The only option for blocking all network traffic is to click Block all network traffic: disconnect network. All inbound and outbound communication is blocked by the personal firewall with no warning displayed. This option is used only if you suspect critical security risks requiring the system to be disconnected from the network. The disable filtering: allow all traffic option, is the opposite of blocking all network traffic. If selected, all personal firewall filtering options are turned off and all incoming and outgoing connections are permitted. It has the same effect as no firewall being present. Five filtering modes are available for the ESET Smart Security Personal firewall.
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Securing web content access
Parental control section works on the basis of a named account. Once an account has been defined a total of 26 web site categories are available for further browser. A child would have the minimum rights of access and an adult the maximum. Selection in the adjacent box allows a particular category of web sites to be enabled or accessible based on the account name. An unchecked box implies that category of web sites is disabled.
Parental control can be setup as enabled or disabled based on the time of the day. Parental control settings can also be security controlled by a password. Moving the mouse over a category will show you a list of web pages that fall into that category. Blocking or allowing a specific web page can be more accurate than blocking or allowing a whole category of web pages. Specific web sites can be added in addition to the category of blocked web sites. Specific web sites that are allowed can also be added through the exceptions option. At the end of the day if the browsed web sites need to be reviewed they are available through the Show Log option under Parental Control.
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Log of events
The Log files contain information about all important program events that have occurred and provide an overview of detected threats. Logging acts as an essential tool in system analysis, threat detection and troubleshooting. Logging is performed actively in the background with no user interaction. Information is recorded based on current log settings. Log files are accessible from the main menu. Select the desired Log type using the Log dropdown menu at the top of the window. The following logs are available: Detected threats, Events, HIPS, Personal firewall, Antispam protection.
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