What happened to Wilders Security?

To be honest, I was never really that interested in AV's, what made WSF interesting to me was the discussion about behavior blockers/HIPS. But those days or gone, so that's why it's no surprise to me that WSF isn't as lively anymore. I don't think it has got anything to do with forum rules.

And about the corporate IT security issues, I guess that most people indeed have nothing much to say, and my posts are also not always that useful. Still some more discussion would be nice, you can always learn from other people, who give their point of view or insight, think of people like itman and cruelsister for example.

 

They are very knowledgeable indeed, and folks have to be grateful when they share that knowledge. They probably gained it doing their jobs, which I am sure keep them very busy. I'm sure they would love to hang out and chitchat all day but we have to take what we can get.
If you really want to see some dead threads, post something in the Linux section...

 

Yes, I see what you mean, they are probably indeed too busy with their jobs. But this is what I miss on the forums, a bit more interest in corporate IT security would be nice.

 

I've worked in corporate IT for 25 years until 2019. The majority in healthcare with 2000 users on VMware clusters and virtual Terminal Servers and later on small marketing agency and startup developing Open Source SAAS platform. Last month I started working on an affordable Zero Trust architecture for Windows 11 without using any of the fancy EDR/XDR features currently available for enterprises. I've given up on using Windows Home and moved on to Education license, which enables me to use most of the Windows Enterprise features. Might consider porting to Professional license after I've finished this project on Education.

This also answer a question why you won't see many corporate IT security topics: Windows Home is not supported when you try to implement many enterprise tools and features available from Microsoft. That said, you can still accomplish a lot with Home using popular 3rd party tools often mentioned on this forum, but that's a totally different approach.

 

To clarify, I'm not saying that we should discuss corporate IT security tools per say. But there are plenty of topics on this forum about how companies get hacked, so that's what I meant. For example, I think it's very interesting to read about the latest hack on MS Exchange Online and Outlook.com, but there is zero discussion.

 

Agreed. It was mind blowing to read review of Lapsus$ attacks mentioning some million dollar companies still using Excel sheets to store passwords. Wonder if anyone got fired over this.

 

The question is how many people on this forum have the knowledge/skill set and willingness to discuss that on an advanced level? I would try to read that but I'm sure it will be fast way above my PC knowledge

 

The reason you can't compare AVs is because years ago this was the official ESET forums, along with some dead firewall brand. That's why the forums are labeled "OTHER antivirus" and "OTHER firewalls". Of course, this forum never shifted with the times and still has that old mentality, and people moved on. I mean, honestly, why CAN'T you call Panda or Webroot a giant POS? Why NOT steer people towards better AVs? In fact, steering people towards better security should be 100% the purpose of a security forum. It's not like there's any "official" software and ethical standards they have to abide by.

The reason this place is dead is because it has stagnated over the years. The only thing I swing by for anymore is the Newegg deals thread, and even that's not doing much anymore.

 

Agree.

 

Save you the trouble...
https://www.newegg.com/global/au-en/todays-deals

 

Me personally I always try to think about how these attacks could have been stopped. Discussion about this would be interesting to me. But like I said, most people are focused on home user PC security, problem is, it's not as exciting as back in the days. It's comparable to movies and music from the 80's and 90's, you will never get that back. WSF was a lot of fun between 2004 and 2016, because of all of the new security tools like HIPS/behavior blockers.

 

Kind of like firewalls. They were fascinating in the early days when most computers didn't have one. I learned a ton from Kerio, Outpost, Zonealarm, and the frequent discussions around them and port filtering technologies. Now that such things are pretty much baked into every OS, there's really less to discuss and be excited about... that, and just getting older; I have other interests!

 

Yep, it was really nice to play with all of them and later implement it at work. Though I still think there's plenty to discuss and get excited about such as EDR/XDR and implementing AI/ML ... if it still interests you.

I think previously the biggest shift has come from consumer endpoint security to enterprise security, as my personal security was light years ahead of what I could implement in a corporate environment without $$$ budgets until Astaro Security Gateway (now Sophos Firewall) became available.

Currently it seems most developments are in the enterprise market and consumer endpoints are lagging behind. Just take a look at the differences between Windows 11 Home/Pro vs Enterprise/Education to see the market is split between consumer and enterprise leaving many features unavailable for consumers. This also kind of makes sense if you take in account you need TPM 1.2 and later generation CPU's to benefit from all the latest developments, which not many consumers are willing to invest in.

This is why Chrome OS makes so much sense for many consumers and in education environments: excellent hardware and no worries about security.

 

I totally get the music anology When I started out we were planning how to stop Windows Rootkits and the Blue Pill concept to trap a running instance of the operating system by starting a thin hypervisor and virtualizing the rest of the machine under it. Now it's less exciting as it's still relatively easy to infect someone without fancy innovations, unless Zero Trust Architecture has been implemented.

 

I only visit 2 forums
Wilders and Windows10Forums

But my first option if I have a question is Wilders

Came

 

What I meant is that you will never get those times back, the golden age for PC security enthousiasts was 2004-2014, remember all of those tools like System Safety Monitor, Neoava Guard, Mamutu, EQSecure and so on. Same with movies from the 80's and 90's, when you look at the current state of Hollywood, it's very sad. Almost all new movies are crap, times have simply changed.

To be honest, I was never really into advanced configuration of firewalls, the only thing that mattered to me was outbound blocking, remember those Matousec leaktests? That was a lot of fun LOL.

Yes, those EDR's (corporate AV's) look like a lot of fun, although I do think they are becoming too complex, I think if you can simplify things you might win over customers. I must say that HitmanPro.Alert is pretty cool because Sophos Intercept X is based on it, so you get enterprise level protection on your home user PC, at least when it comes to behavior blocking.

https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/endpoint-antivirus

 

In my opinion, Wilders Security was buzzing when the backup, imaging & disk mgmt section was busy.
You can promote all the security apps in the world, but the bottom line for data security is backup, backup, backup.

 

Another reason for Wilders' decline is the change in IT trends. Mobile phones and tablets and their OS, AI, virtual reality, etc. reign over the good old IT topics. Unfortunately, Wilders has not caught this momentum or only very marginally.

 

Yeah.
The younger generation has other priorities.

But I don't think it's just that,my daughter (29 years old) when she has a problem with her smartphone or her pc asks her father for help,instead of her partner.

And my daughter is superior to the average pc user.
With the pc she does her daily work.
She was already using Linux in middle school.

We are more used to helping ourselves,maybe asking for help online.
They probably turn,whenever possible to people close to them.

 

After a nearly twenty-year break from the world, one of the first places I looked for was Wilders. Things have definitely changed but, twenty years ago? People were getting hammered by viruses and other malware, and the HijackThis people were extremely busy. While I certainly wish that things were a little more freewheeling the way they were back in Ye Olde Days (remember the 'smite' button?), I wouldn't wish the events that probably brought most of us here on anybody.

 

Correct, but same goes for the older generation. For example, SpyShelter released a new version a few weeks ago, and there is virtually almost no discussion on WSF and MalwareTips, that's the difference. Back in the days these type of threads would have already had 10 pages of discussion. Times have simply changed.

 

You are right,but we have also grown old.
The members who constantly attend the forum have aged.
I am 60 years old and should be stimulated by people younger than me.

 

Back in the day, there were several HIPS or anti-executable type software developers, and this type of security, along with SRP, Apparmor and least privilege security, drew far greater interest than nowadays. I just did a quick search on many of the HIPS or related products from the early 2000's discussed in these forums and found all of these:

System Safety monitor
ProSecurity
Defense Wall
Jetico Firewall
Process Guard
Online Armor
Threat fire
Malware Defender

Well they no longer exist or stopped development, or were morphed into some kind of security suite. They only really appealed to us folks who love to fine-tune and tinker with our security setups, such as those of us who frequent security forums . I think developers gave up on them because of the small market share. So now of course no one talks about them any more.

Hey I'm not far behind you, except I don't act my age

 

SpyShelter had an update a few weeks ago?