Cerberus Security Guard

With the aid of Cerberus Security Guard you can mange Windows security and privacy settings from a single place. This is an intuitive software application that contains configuration settings regarding services, the system, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Windows Media Player, among others.

The whole installation procedure doesn't take long. However, because Cerberus Security Guard is ad-supported, it offers to download and install additional tools which it doesn't actually need to function normally. These components can be excluded from setup though, provided that you don't rush through the wizard steps.

It;s wrapped in a clear-cut interface, represented by a normal-looking window with a neatly organized layout, where all you have to do is select options and apply changes immediately.

Regarding general security, you can clear the pagefile at PC shutdown and make the Hosts file read only, as well as disable DCMO, epmap, storage of credentials and .NET passwords, LMHash, Microsoft Data interrogation (RegDone), null sessions, Recycle Bin, remote desktop mode, and NetBIOS over TCP/IP.

As far as services are concerned, you can set the spooler service to manual mode and deactivate a long list of features, including the messenger service, RPC locator, automatic update, DHCP and DNS clients, the error reporting services, application layer gateway, help and support, security center, and schedule service, among many others.

Other removable components focus on the system, IE, Firefox and Windows Media Player. Before proceeding with the removal task, you can create a backup with the current files to be able to restore them later if any OS stability issues occur.

The tool didn't put a strain on the PC performance in our tests, running on low CPU and RAM, and it deleted files rapidly. However, it prompted an error and crashed every time we switched to another active application and then switched back to Cerberus Security Guard's window. We must also take into account that it hasn't been updated for a while, and it likely has stability issues with later Windows editions.