Online Armor's NEW release has a wicked new feature

Run Safer Goes GREEN!

Lets just talk about one of the new features of Online Armor (free and paid) - the green border around apps that are currently running in "Safer" mode.

Try this for a test:

1) Download a file from a browser you are running "Safer" and launch it from the browser. You will see, because the process was created by the browser (with lowered rights) that this program inherits the green bordering - a nice indication that the program is also running in "Safer" mode.

If you save the file from the browser, and then manually open it with a double click - it will run "Normal".

This may cause some new users to complain that when they download a desired file, it cannot install because of a permissions issue - BUT if this were a drive by, it would not be able to (for example) write to windows, the root of the drive, or program files directory.

This is a really cool feature (runsafer itself did not change, just the visualisation of it) - but the bordering/indication really makes it clear what's happening. I thought about not including the bordering in the free version - but it's just too cool not to make it available for everyone.

2) Set your Outlook/Outlook Express/EmailClientOfChoice to run-safer. Restart it so you see the border (indicating protection). Now, if you have an email with an attachment (PDF, whatever) - double click it from inside the mail client.

What you should see is that (in the pdf example) acrobat cranks up as you'd expect (or foxit ) - with your document - and again, with a nice green border around it.

Do the same with your IM clients - except for when you want to update them - and you have a nice, easy and visible layer of protection that really works across several key infection points. You can also run MS Word, MS Excel as safer as well with ease. (On my system I'm running Outlook, my chat clients and web browsers (FF and IE) in safer mode now)

With the addition of this visualisation - run safer is now firmly my favorite OA feature. You could experiment further with changing some other settings (for example: turn off prompts in webshield, turn off prompt on unknown and auto-allow trusted to connect to the net to off as well) and you'd probably get fairly few popups - with runsafer doing the heavy lifting in terms of protecting you against accidental clickage.

I thought I would take the time to highlight one of it's most overlooked features (and , IMHO one of the coolest)

Mike








Subscribe in a reader