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Last year I wrote in this column about a free suite of excellent security products from a little known company called Comodo (http://www.comodo.com/).

Comodo is one of those sleeper companies that quietly provides very good products and services, but just seems to dwell in the background while it adds paying customers and clients. Comodo is an international company with offices in the U.S., the U.K., the Ukraine, and in India.

While not visible to the ordinary internet user, Comodo is the exclusive provider of digital security services to the top level internet domain name registrants. Comodo has over 200,000 commercial customers in over 100 countries, and protects over a half-million businesses and private individuals.

As is common in the field, Comodo offers some excellent free products available to all users that Comodo hopes will spread its reputation and services, and eventually attract paying clients to its more sophisticated commercial products.

In my earlier column on Comodo, I discussed the individual free Comodo security products, including its antivirus, firewall, antispam, and other security products, all of which can still be downloaded individually, but work together as do many of the competitive commercial security suites. To ease the download process, and even better integrate the protective functions, Comodo has introduced its free Comodo Internet Security, a fully functional, but basic antivirus, firewall, and proactive security suite.

This free suite has been recognized by the media for its quality, by being awarded CNET's highest 5 star rating, and was selected by PC Magazine as its "Editors' Choice". Comodo hopes that users of the free security suite will want to eventually upgrade to its commercial big brother ($40) that offers additional and enhanced features along with free 24/7 online chat support.

Comodo offers a somewhat unique free product in its "Comodo Memory Firewall Version 2.0". This is an unusual utility in that unlike a conventional firewall (which is also required to maximize security), this Memory Firewall monitors the memory of the computer and the running applications. It is on the lookout for attacks on running programs such as buffer overflow attacks, a common and damaging threat to our computing security. Attacks such as these, which can be prevented with this Memory Firewall, can cause system crashes or steal confidential information from the targeted computer.

An extremely common threat faced by all web surfers is a form of identity theft through the use of "phishing" or otherwise fraudulent websites. Comodo offers its "Free Forever" Comodo Verification Engine, which notifies the user if a website is legitimate or fraudulent. If a website is known to be legitimate, simply placing the mouse over the website logo will display a green border. This is an excellent tool to prevent some of the more common online forms of identity theft.

Many thousands of computers are lost or stolen each year. It is a known fact that thousands of laptop or notebook computers are stolen in airports and other places annually. One major concern of the owner of a lost or stolen computer is the potential disclosure and abuse of the personal data on the hard drive.

Comodo offers a solution to this vexing problem, its free Disk Encryption Software, which can be used to encode the data on a hard drive, preventing its use by unauthorized individuals. This provides continuous protection of the data on the drive, and includes two levels of data authentication. This protects sensitive data without disrupting the ability to legitimately utilize the data, but makes the same data useless to an unauthorized user, such as a thief.

You may have heard commercials on radio and TV about a "VPN" or Virtual Private Network, where selected computers can be connected together over the internet, just as if they would be connected over a wired in-house network. For those who may need to connect distant computers, Comodo offers its free "Comodo EasyVPN". This VPN provides secure encrypted communications over the internet, and allows for the safe transmission and reception of sensitive communications. It also allows for remote access to connected computers, including a "remote desktop" feature that allows one user to access control over another distant computer. For family use, EasyVPN allows for the quick and easy internet exchange of music or photos, and even allows connected users to play multi-user games. This is like having a remote office, where the office computer can be securely accessed from anywhere there is an internet connection. This may be a very useful utility.

I hate spam, that unwanted junk email. Comodo offers a free anti-spam utility that can stop spam, phishing (identity theft), and other fraudulent email from getting into your inbox. The software can import the address book from most popular email clients to create a safe senders' list, and provides for a challenge and response system to verify unknown senders, and adds verified senders to a safe "white list". Using Comodo's Anti Spam utility can significantly reduce the unwanted mail in your inbox.

Sometimes we must send and receive sensitive information via email that we would not want others to be able to access or read. Comodo has a free solution to this problem, its SecureEmail utility. This utility encrypts and digitally signs email such that it cannot be read by anyone except the intended recipient. This utility seamlessly integrates with all major email clients, and has a wizard to help set up the program.

While Comodo offers many other utilities, it is best known for its security products. One such free product offered is its BOClean, which can detect and remove rootkits, hijackers, keyloggers, and Trojans, as it continuously monitors the system for attack. BOClean offers real time protection against online identity theft caused by malware, as well as protection from file damage caused by other varieties of malware.

Regular readers of this column have read the three most important words in computing, "Backup, Backup, and Backup!" Comodo offers a full featured and free backup utility that can automatically back up critical data files to almost any form of media or storage system. Backups my be scheduled automatically, or run at will, and allow for the easy recovery of files in the event of system crash, natural disaster, theft, or other loss of data. With software such as this, and a secure place to store the backed up data, there is no reason why any important data should ever be lost.

Comodo offers its System Cleaner utility to clean computers of useless and wasteful files and registry entries that can adversely impact computer performance, thus improving performance. Comodo System Cleaner is among the fastest and most efficient system cleaner tested, including several of the popular competitors. System Cleaner includes both disk cleaner and registry cleaner tools, as well as other powerful diagnostic tools. System Cleaner claims "100% Safe Cleaning" as it implements proprietary "Registry Protection" and "Safe Delete" features which can automatically restore any files that may have been deleted in error.

Comodo offers an impressive collection of free utilities, and should be commended for offering them. Comodo explicitly states that many of these utilities are free for both personal and business users, making them most cost effective at "free".

For this price, they are most worthy of a try.

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