TRANSIENT STORAGE OFFERS EXTRA PROTECTION

There's a lot going on when you use your computer and most of it occurs without you even knowing about it. Oh sure, you go online, word process some documents, check your email, play a few games and so on. But all of that is really only the part on the surface, the part you get to see.  What's really going on, all the background stuff, the hard drive access, the housekeeping functions that endeavor to keep everything running smoothly, all of that happens beneath that surface and thank goodness for that. You really don't need to know when the Registry is being changed for example.  You don't need to know anything about these things to productively use the machine. But being completely oblivious to these internal functions can also be a recipe for disaster. Some preventative maintenance is needed on your part to help keep things running smoothly.

You may not know a computer virus if you tripped over one but you probably already know that you need an anti-virus program to protect your PC from getting infected. Anti-spyware is another perfect example of something you need to have as is a firewall when you go online. It's pretty much a sure bet that without these safeguards in place, it won't be very long before you experience your first computer meltdown.

Antivirus, anti-spyware and firewall products are traditionally the most popular in the software protection category. But there are other products out there that try to protect using alternative methods and I'm gratified to see them. The bad guys are always trying to find methods of defeating the mainstream protection products so it never hurts to supplement them with an additional layer of protection, especially if that layer is something that makes the battle a little less painless. I recently came across something called Sandboxie and although the idea behind it is a simple one, sometimes it's the simple ideas that can be the most effective.

When you run any program on your computer, data flows between your computer's memory and its hard drive which stores everything. The problems begin to happen when something malicious gets written to the hard drive. Sandboxie is a small utility that tries to prevent that from happening. The metaphor they use is that of a sandbox. The idea is that instead of letting an application read and write directly to your hard drive, it reads and writes everything that happens to a temporary holding area or sandbox. As the application runs, it may read needed information directly from the hard drive but it will never write to it. The idea is that when you first install something new, you first try it out using the sandbox. If something goes wrong or something bad happens, the transient nature of the sandbox will allow you to throw out everything that was in it. And when that happens, your computer is restored to the condition before you installed the new product.

Let me say that this is not a perfect solution for all conditions.  Sometimes infections may not make themselves known for a long period of time, if ever. So if you don't know that your computer has been turned into a zombie for example, you won't know to throw out the sandbox in the first place. Still, the concept has merit for certain scenarios. A good one would be letting a friend use your computer for a while. You want to insure that whatever he does with it, you can just put it back the way it was by throwing out his sandbox. Makes sense to me. I say give Sandboxie a try, especially because it's free. You can register the program if you like it for $25 and you'll get a lifetime registration that brings along some additional abilities when you do so. These include being able to just sandbox specific programs rather than the whole computer as well as running multiple sandboxes instead of just one.

Sandboxie works only with Windows and is available for download at www.sandboxie.com


 

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