Automatic Decision making & Actions by Comodo

Agree with you to a large extent.

There must be a certain degree of reliance on your selected security software, rather than being a software engineer to use it.

In saying that, a little knowledge helps. You don’t need to know how a motor works to know how to drive, but you do have to understadn that you need to check your tyres, your oil etc. Admittedly some people go their whole lives without knowing whats “under the hood”, but the ones that do tend to have less trouble.

The hardest thing is finding the compromise point that will still provide the best security with minimal user interaction while still alowing the user to “look under the hood” if they so choose.

Cheers,
Ewen :slight_smile:

My point is very much the same… and sorry if I am rude.

There should be a way in CIS to configure it for newbies and common users aswell.

A crude denial of the needs of common users and particularly, asking every user of CIS to be an expert is something that is a big hole in the comodo policy itself, dropping the product down to a community of just experts and making it just a geek product.

Most of my friends have always wondered why comodo shows the same number of malware everytime they put their pendrive in even after scanning the system everytime with CIS (In fact, what was happening was they do not understand that they have to wait till the scan completes and click clean…).

It is funny to ask users to click on clean just because comodo is not sure whether what it claims as malware or probable malware (heur) in it’s scans is a real malware or not. It looks as if CIS is trying to learn from the responses of users or either not still competent enough to be a professional suite to take confident decisions (claims simply that it is being on the safe side with default deny…which is in fact a defense+ component, independent of antivirus component).

While I understand that default deny would be a great anti-execuatble policy which only works when the malware tries to execute, it is not what is expected from a mature security suite, lack of professional antivirus part, just depending on defense + (How CIS is claiming itself now a days…CIS Pro).

CIS still has to improve a lot in this area and should have a serious brain wash in order to a fresh look at the world, how users are and behave, before it emerges in to the next version.

Otherwise, it can stay the same entertaining the geek as a great product as it has always been… (It is indeed a great product for the experts, I firmly agree with this.)

My opinion is, that Comodo should stop focusing only on the technical aspects of CIS, and should spend some time by improvements of the usability aspects too.

Concerning the “security impact”, I don’t think that giving users more control over the way CIS behaves would lower their security anyhow. If Comodo wants to make sure that no one is able to lower his protection by modifying the CIS settings, then why did they exposed e.g. the Defence+ Rules? I think that the users should be given various means to adjust CIS to their needs - because different users have different needs. Even when Comodo developers seem to think that everyone else should adopt their own needs.

In particular, I miss e.g.:

  • better structuration of Defence+ Rules, currently they are stacked up on a heap; for instance, when you define a rule assigning a file group a policy, and then you are alerted for a program, a new rule is created totally unconnected with the original rule.

  • more control over actions of safe applications, currently you cannot get alerts for their actions (unless in paranoid mode)

  • fix of various bugs in UI, like that the alert dialogs do not offer all defined policies, which makes custom policies almost useless

  • possibility to switch off the parent control lock for the currently logged user (that knows password) without disabling it completely

  • etc.

    Martin.

I think CIS should have an option where can select for advanced user (CIS should be as it is now and more advanced features), and for average user (CIS should be simplified and give more concrete hints and where it takes automatic decisions)

Regards,
Valentin

this is called: threat files as {partially limited}
the auto sanbox is a an auto desicion making but still makes a few ones

I know the functionality of auto sandboxing.

Hi Do we have any improvement in this direction?

Specially with Valkyrie and DACS we now have a high chance of implementing an automatic/pre configured decision making.

We can always take a backup before cleaning so that the user always has a chance to get back the file, if he thinks that Comodo’s decision is wrong.

For your parents you get GeekBuddy so that they can manage CIS for them.

Hi Melih, thanks for the quick response.

I can not agree with your suggestion.

Not many people out there who use computer for normal/daily work are either experts of computer security or patient enough to ask for guidance when some message pops up. You do not seem to understand &consider the real situations out there as much as you are concerned with the security.

I can understand how tough it is to maintain the balance between usability and security.

How about my proposals? May be they can be of any use…

  1. Different configurations for different user accounts on the same system.

Normal users can select a less verbose configuration, and work happily with out any pop ups.

Experts/Geeks can have a highly verbose configuration for their user account, so that they can enjoy the full strength of CIS.

  1. During the first launch CIS asks the users, whether they want a novice mode/automatic mode or an advanced more/Geek mode.

This happens per user account basis not per system basis. So each user selects how CIS interacts with him in the beginning itself.

I like the idea of settings on a per user account basis.

I guess a local behaviour blocker could take away some of the left over alerts that show up when using default settings.

Maybe you could configure one of the presets (lets say the Internet configuration) to ‘Languys’ video setting and then show your parents how to select that setting by right clicking the Comodo icon in the task bar.
Then when you are on the computer, you can switch over to your configuration.

I saw in the CIS Charrette - Firewall Alert that there is a risk level and I especially like this handy addition. It got me thinking that maybe this could help CIS make decisions for the users. There could be a setting like:

“(Allow/Block/Ask) all (Incoming/Outgoing/Incoming and Outgoing) requests if the risk level is (Very Low/Low/Medium/High/Very High) or (Lower/Higher)”

So for example…

Allow all outgoing requests if the risk level is low or lower
Block all outgoing requests if the risk level is high or higher
Ask all outgoing requests if the risk level is medium

The new firewall alert looks smart enough to be able to determine the threat of each new program so maybe the rules I made up above could be global and apply to all internet applications. Comodo could have these rules preset in a fresh install so the user won’t have to figure this stuff out for themselves.