Firewall + Antivirus

Hi all, just had a question about firewalls and antivirus. For my new computer i do not do any web surfing period. (no email, no games, no browsing) Just strictly tradestation. Is it still neccesary to use a firewall and antivirus program when all i will be doing is using tradestation? If it is, then could you recomend a low resource consuming firewall/antivirus program? I already have a hardware firewall in place, Thank you.

Regards,

Larry

 

If you set your hardware firewall up to only allow the urls necessary for trading you are good to go.

 

If you are only using the PC for TradeStation and not for other activities then it may be acceptable from security perspective to not install a software firewall if you have a hardware firewall on place on your broadband connection performing NAT (e..g router). Note that software firewalls perform stateful packet inspection on your local machine which will definitely slow down your trading software.

You still need Antivirus in place on your PC to protect you from packet based attacks that may somehow target your machine. For example, another machine behind your HW firewall gets infected and sends out mal-formed packets to target your TradeStation PC with an infection.

- Greg

 

I am abot to install Comodo BOClean Anti-Malware - the attraction is that it seems the way it works is to know all the ways malware can attack a computer and blocks this. It does not actually scan like the AV programs (that I stopped using years ago because of all the issues).

 

You're asking for trouble running a Windows box without a firewall. It's only a matter of time before you get pwnd.

Consider the price of a hardware firewall versus the cost to you of getting your computer hacked into and the potential problems that may cause.

opm8

Edit: I use m0n0wall as my firewall and Anti-Vir anti-virus.

 

Comodo firewall (or - not as good - zonealarm).

AntiVir or AVG virus detection.

 

Thanks for all the replies, a question for Greg: none of the pcs will be networked together (cant access each other), would virus' through packets still be an issue?

 

AVG is the best..

 

Actually, there's been cases where AVG failed to remove a virus. Do a search. I also know from personal experience and those of several people that once in a while AVG will get stuck trying to download an update, always claiming it's corrupted. There's practically no way around such an error except to perform some undocumented moves. In my experience AntiVir has been best. Of course everyone has their own opinions.

opm8

 

I have been using AVG for years. Their Technical Support Group has been but outstanding. I have had none of the problems you mentioned.