Network Security Poll

T

TYLERofDOOM

Registered
Hi, I'm currently in a Technical Writing class and I decided to do a report on network security. I need a primary source for this and decided that I would poll you fine people on your prefrences in security related software to get said primary source.

1. What webserver would you consider to be the most secure, and which one do you use at home or work?

a. Microsoft IIS
b. Apache Web Server
c. Microsoft PWS
d. Other (Please List)

2. What web browser do you consider to be the most secure, and which one do you use at home or work?

a. Mozilla Firefox
b. Microsoft Internet Explorer
c. Opera
d. Netscape
e. Cello
f. Other (Please List)

3. What virus scanner do you consider the most effective, and which one do you use at home or work?

a. Norton
b. McAffe
c. AVG
d. Other (Please List)

4. What operating system do you consider the most secure, and which one do you use at home or work? (I dont want to start a flame war here, but I gotta ask...)

a. OS/2
b. Novell
c. Macintosh OS (Include version (9, II-e, X, Tiger, etc...))
d. Microsoft (Include verison (3.11, 9x, 2k, etc...))
e. Linux (Include your distro)
f. Unix
g. Other (Please List)

5. Finaly, if you could list any other security related programs that you like to use and could be pertinant to my report, I would greatly appreciate it.

P.S. I'm admittidly not very familiar with the macintosh OS's so please go easy on me...
 
1. b (Apache and Apache)
2. f (Safari)
3. d (don't know and none)
4. c (Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.3.9)
5. I don't think I even have any security related programs, but I do use security related utilities and features of my OS. E.g. I use SSH (sftp, scp) instead of normal ftp whenever possible and mount network volumes via an SSH tunnel. I encrypt my Airport wireles snetwork with WPA etc. I disabled automatic opening of downloaded files from my webbrowser and displying of HTML formatted mail in my mail client. These are all utilities and features, but not full-blown security programs.

I guess you will get many more responses along these lines. Security is much less an issue on the Mac platform when compared to Windows. As of now there are no Virusses, tronjans etc. at all. Only minor demo-like proof of concept malware exists which needs user interaction to spread or cause harm, hence it is easily avoided and nobody really worries.
 
ditto with two exceptions

os - 10.3.9 only
don't have encryption on my airport network - see no point given my address in Cairo, Egypt.
 
1. Apache. I don't use any, though.
2. Probably Firefox, but I use Safari. Everything but Explorer is pretty solid.
3. No opinion. No Mac viruses, so it's a moot point for me.
4. Unix. And, by extension, just about any Linux distro or OS X, at least if properly configured.

5. I value Mac OS X's encryption features. I can encrypt disk images, or my entire home folder. I also like StuffIt's encryption (which is better, at least in theory; 128-bit AES vs. 256-bit AES).
 
1. (d)The one that's managed by the most competent administrators. Which typically means (b)Apache (hem hem). Work is a firmly entrenched (a)IIS shop. Which is the most secure server for them to use, as it's the one they know best. If I were running my own servers I'd use (d)thttpd if I could do with smaller features; else I'd use (b)Apache.

2. (f) Something very simple, like links or lynx - the less features, the less features that can be exploited. At work I use (b)IE, because we're not allowed to install things on our computers, even though I think using IE is almost criminally negligent; at home I use (f)Safari.

3. I don't know which I'd consider most effective. They're all pretty good, I'm sure. At work it's (d)Trend, at home I occasionally use (d)ClamAV to check out an interesting email attachment.

4. (g)The one with the most competent admins. That said, (g)Sun's Ray thin client platform stuff looks some kind of cool from a security administration point of view, although I'm a little leery of it due to closed-sourceness. For a home or small business, any well-established open source OS (e/f/g) like SuSE/Debian/... Linux or Free/NetBSD is a good bet.

5. SSH all over the place.
 
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