GFI recently advertised FreeWare products on the cover of the July Issues of TechNet Magazine kicking off it’s We Care imitative. I’ve always been a fan of GFI and even more so now after reviewing the advertised link! GFI actually is giving away three great products (only two are available at the time of this writing 7/1/09.) The first product is their Popular GFI LANguard. GFI LANguard is a popular Network Security Scanner and Vulnerability Management Tool capable of not only SCANNING but REMEDIATING issues (IE: Patching vulnerable Windows systems.) I’ve personally used it in the corporate environment to scan for and then deploy Microsoft Security patches on several thousand systems so… I can personally vouch for the quality of the tool. It will also scan UNIX/Linux systems, however my experience with that is minimal. Here’s the quick write-up on the site:
Powerful network, security and port scanner with network auditing capabilitiesOver 15,000 vulnerability assessments carried out across your network, including virtual environmentReduces the total cost of ownership by centralizing vulnerability scanning, Patch Management and Network AuditingAutomated options help to retain a secure network state with minimal administrative effortNetwork-wide auditing functions provides a complete picture of network and port security set-up#1 Windows commercial security scanner (voted by Nmap users for two years running) and Best of TechEd 2007 (security)Freeware Version LIMITED TO 5 IP’s ONLY
Additionally, it has an excellent reporting Add-on which is also free. Granted, 5 IP’s isn’t the greatest BUT, for a small home network it should make most geeky groovyReaders VERY happy. The Second product is GFI Home Backup Unlike GFI LANguard (where GFI is probably just trying to get their foot in the door of your IT shop,) GFI Home Backup is a GREAT piece of Freeware and not limited in any way. After doing some testing, I found it to be a full-featured professional grade home backup solution capable of backing up any home system to almost any device including a remote FTP server, which is great if you have one of those $5.00 hosting plans with unlimited bandwidth and disk space (Bluehost.com, Dreamhost.com, etc.) Again, here’s a few lines from the product site.
Secure encrypted backup of all your important files (2 groovy thumbs up!)Easy-to-use wizard-driven interface – perfect for beginnersRestore your data in minutes using common ZIP formatSchedule Backups to virtually any storage deviceCompatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7
The Third free product offered with GFI’s “We Care” initiative is GFI MailEssentials. Although not available for download yet, note it’s “exactly” what I would call Freeware. Apparently, GFI is giving away only the Email Disclaimer feature for corporate outgoing emails. However, it does not include the SPAM filtering/scanning, reporting, etc. So with that, I give it 2 groovy thumbs down. My advice is to grab the GFI Home Backup while it’s free, and a copy of the GFI LANguard for the more Geeky groovyReaders out there. You can expect to see a few detailed How-Tos here on groovyPost in the coming days reviewing both products. Would love to hear comments from any groovyReader with experience from either product. Thoughts? Love GFI? Hate them? Hey – in regards to backing up with FTP – has Bluehost or Dreamhost ever complained about you backing up so much data on you account? Comment Name * Email *
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