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Microsoft recently released a newly updated antispyware tool known as Windows Defender (Beta 2). Windows Defender is designed to provide protection against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats that are the bane of spyware buildup. The software is available free to Windows users, and may be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx
Microsoft also recently released another new free beta product that scans your PC and promises to check for and remove viruses and spyware, improve your PC's performance, and get rid of junk on your hard disk--all in one full service operation. This service is available from the Windows Live Safety Center at http://safety.live.com/
Caveats:
For $49.95 a year, Windows users will soon be offered the convenience of a new Microsoft maintenance product that promises to keep their PCs updated, maintained, and patched with the latest security software. The new service, dubbed Window OneCare Live, is slated to go on sale in June; it is currently available in a free test version at http://www.windowsonecare.com/ For more details, see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002791208_msftsecurity08.html
A recent study by Stanford University, the Coverity security analysis firm, and Symantec antivirus researchers found that LAMP has the lowest bug density of all open source software in use today. The so-called LAMP stack of open source software includes the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database and one of three scripting languages (PHP, Perl, or Python), and it is currently rivalling Java and Microsoft's .Net as the software of choice for mainstream corporate computing. The weakest LAMP component was found to be PHP, which had greater bug density than the baseline. For details, see "LAMP lights the way in open source security" at http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,39315781,00.htm