Today, I am going to suggest 5 great tools for your USB key. All these tools are free and beneficial not only to a IT person but to the typical computer user. I won’t go in depth on any of these. If you want more info and want to try them out, I have provided the links to them. Although, there are a multitude of great tools out there, I am only going to list the 5 that I use quite frequently. To keep it short.

First off, let’s take a look at Password management software. In today’s world, passwords are the first line of defense when it comes to security. Email systems, websites, documents and communication tools such as instant messenger, all require passwords. While each of these items allow you to store your passwords on your computer, are they really secure? Not really. Most passwords are stored in plain text and can easily be found. Another problem that arises is the ability to remember all your passwords.  Are you using one sole password for everything? That’s another no-no when it comes to levels of security but we can discuss that later.

Let me introduce you to KeePass. This wonderful little utility is free and allows you to manage all your passwords in a secure way. With KeePass, you only have to remember one master password and that’s it. I would suggest making that password quite strong otherwise it defeats the purpose. Keepass works by using encryption algorithms, even if Windows does cache your password, it will not be in plain text and the ability to break or decode will be less likely.

Keepass can be had here http://keepass.info/

Next tool - Let’s focus on a networking utility called TCPView. It’s handy and it’s also free. TCPView allows you to view and manage all TCP/UDP connections on your system. Wouldn’t you like to know exactly what you are connected to and who is connected to you? Yes, advanced Windows users can use a embedded windows command like Netstat to view these properties but let’s face it, a GUI  is much nicer to look at and you don’t have to use a bunch of command line jibber jabber to get all your connection information. I like TCPView because I can delete a connection by the click of a button. I can also see what processes those connections are associated with.

Get TCPView here http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897437.aspx

Third up - Aida32 . One of the best freeware applications to profile your system and find out what hardware you have and the software you have installed. Not only does Aida32 do the above mentioned but you can also use it to benchmark your system. Aida32 takes just a few minutes to run and get results. You can either view the information on screen, print it or save it to a file. Here are some of the features Aida32 provides:

* full hardware & software information on 80 pages
* built-in hardware database: detailed information about 22000 components
* physical information for CPU, motherboard, hard disk, optical drive
* motherboard chipset, buses, sensor information
* installed programs, event logs list
* diagnostics module to reveal possible problems
* memory benchmark
* automatic audit via command-line switches
* ADO/ODBC database support
* remote control through TCP/IP network
* 32-bit low-level hardware detection
* multi-threaded program model
* full Windows XP compatibility

Download Aida32 here http://www.snapfiles.com/get/aida32.html

Four - Avast! Virus Cleaner . I have been using Symantec and AVG for quite awhile now and have just discovered Avast!. Avast! Virus Cleaner is not to be confused with a typical AV solution. It does not provide real time protection but it does clean the viruses/malware/trojans that are currently running amuck. Besides the fact, that not all AV solutions will remove memory resident programs or fix your registry; Avast! will. One more great feature about Avast! is they have an AV also available for OS X. Yeah, I know what you are thinking “My Mac doesn’t get viruses”. Well, although there are very few well known viruses compared to Microsoft’s OS’s, it’s definitely a possibility and why not take one of the steps now to avoid it.

Try out Avast! here http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-virus-cleaner.html

Lastly, RockXP . How many times have you needed to reinstall Microsoft software and have lost the serial number or simply misplaced it? Yeah for me, tons. RockXP allows you to recover your Windows XP product key along with other Microsoft software keys. Not only that but it will recover usernames and passwords used with MSN Messenger, Windows Secure Storage and your Internet Connection parameters. Here’s a list of some of the features that RockXP provides:

* – Allows you to get all Microsoft Software Serials
* – Allows you to change your XP key
* – Allows you to save your XP activation
* – Allows you to retrieve your internet connection parameters (like passwords)
* – Allows you to retrieve MSN login and password
* – Allows you to retrieve XP login and HASH password
* – Allows you to display system password (LSA)
* – Allows you to generate random passwords

Check out RockXP here http://www.rockxp.org/

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