Secunia PSI (Personal Software Inspector) is a neat little application that scans your PC and informs you about outdated (only if it contains vulnerabilities), end-of-life and vulnerable software. Basically what it does is scans your PC (sort of like a virus scanner) and then creates a report of the software that needs attention.

When I first scanned my computer it was rated at 85% (the percentage of software that is “safe”). It took me a while, but in about three quarters of an hour I had all the software on my Windows XP install  updated and had my results up to 98% (I still have some software in Vista that needs updating).

The neat part is that it also provides you a direct link to downloads of new software versions  and if there aren’t any downloads it provides fairly detailed info on how to fix it if possible.

The current version is RC2 and it is free for personal use. Please be aware that this software stays in contact with a database at Secunia to provide up-to-date information about vulnerable and end-of-life software. If that concerns you then maybe you would want to stay away from this product.

If you are interested in giving it a try go to psi.secunia.com. I’ve include some screenshots of the applicaton below.

PS> I heard about this on Security Now…

Ok so in the last post I talked about a product called Free CompuSec and talked about how good it was. This weekend I decided to try out the whole disk encryption included with the latest version of TrueCrypt.

First off I would like to say that I am very impressed with TrueCrypt. It’s open source (which is a bonus for me) and is extremely easy to use. I’ve used a TrueCrypt in the past to create encrypted volumes and files but never for whole disk encryption.

The biggest plus over Free CompuSec is that TrueCrypt can encrypt your drive while you use it. Unlike Free CompuSec you don’t have to reboot and put your computer aside while you wait for it to finish. The only drawback is that it takes TrueCrypt a long time to do the whole drive. My notebook has an 80 GB drive and it took just about 10 hours to encrypt the whole thing. When I used Free CompuSec it only took about 2 hours to encrypt a 60GB drive.

I guess, once again, it depends on where your priorities are. If you need to use your computer then you might want to use TrueCrypt as you can still use your computer while it’s running but if you don’t mind being without a system for a few hours then you might want to try Free CompuSec. As far as the rest goes they both do just about the same thing. TrueCrypt doesn’t have the secure VOIP program but it’s a great utility if you just need encryption.

I’ve finally decided it’s time to look into whole disk encryption for my notebooks. This day and age with all the information one has on a mobile PC there really isn’t much of an excuse to not have it encrypted. I’ve recently found a program called Free CompuSec by a German company named CE-Infosys. I would like to say thanks to Steve Gibson of the Security Now podcast for putting me on to this program.

Free CompuSec can do lots of things but my main reason to use it was for the whole disk encryption because I was worried what would happen in the even my notebook was lost or stolen. Below is a short list of the features I think are very useful.

1. Pre boot access control (the main reason I use it)
2. Encryption for CD / DVD for secure publishing and sharing of CD data using CDCrypt
3. Encryption for Diskettes and Removable Media Devices such as ZIP drives, USB thumb drives or Memory sticks
4. [ClosedTalk]® for secure VoIP communication
5. It’s free for both personal and business use (this not not very common)

Installing Free CompuSec was a breeze and only took a few minutes. What sucks up the time is when you first encrypt the drive. This can take up to two hours (at least on the two notebooks I tested it on) so if you are of the impatient type you might want to set it to encrypt when you are on the way to bed for the night.

All in all my first impression of this software is good. There are others out there like TrueCrypt, which is open source, that would probably accomplish the same thing but I am not overly familiar with how it works so you may want to try both of them and see which one works best for you.

~TheNerd