Protecting Windows

[andrew clarke]

On Thu, Feb 09, 2006 at 02:32:44PM +1030, Brian Astill wrote:

> Person with deteriorating vision has discovered Dragon 
> Naturally Speaking which not only allows the construction of text 
> from speech but can also speak from received text.  ie letter writing 
> and email conversing etc become possible for the visually impaired.
> 
> All of which is wonderful except - you guessed it - the %$$#@*& 
> program runs on Windows 2000/XP only.  Why would anyone in their  
> right mind NOT port a program as sensible as this to a SECURE OS?

I don't know of any such software for Linux or BSD.

Does similar software exist for Mac OS X?  It might.  There is a bigger
market for it.

To me, the usual routine of securing Windows seems to be the wisest
choice in this instance, eg. not allowing end-users to have Admin
rights, and where possible, using open source software (Firefox,
Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Abiword, ...) that's written and updated
regularly by security-conscious people, etc.  Some simple words of
advice (beware of email attachments, etc) may also help.

Running a simple standalone FreeBSD/Linux firewall "in front" of the
Windows may also help security somewhat, preventing attackers connecting
directly to the Windows machine.  Note that many broadband cable/DSL
routers perform the same task when working in "Internet sharing" mode
(sometimes known as NAT).

Regards
Andrew