How to curb rampant hacking of SIN’s, vehicles and other common facilities and items. It stands to reason that if there are security companies for corporations the wireless matrix would have the same kind of options for the common man.

Commlink Matrix Security
Due to the relative ease an experienced hacker can slice through most common matrix defences security companies specialising in matrix security of non-corporate commlinks, vehicles and other demands offer a cheap option where people can register themselves to their services who monitor people’s wireless connections against hacking and other matrix attacks.

Monthly Cost / Agent assigned to customer
Agent Rating 1-3 = 100Y/Rating
Agent Rating 4-6 = 200Y/Rating
Attack Program 1-3 = +100Y (Blackout & Attack)
Attack Program 4-6 = +300Y (Blackout & Attack)

Agents can be chosen in three different configurations with multiple program options:

Watcher Agent = Analyze (Fixed), Browse, Scan
Tracker Agent = Track (Fixed) Analyze, Scan, Stealth
Hunter Agent = Attack or Blackout (Fixed), Armor, Medic

Sample Security Companies
Metatech Surveillance
Knighttech
Fairlight Communications
Starcom Security

Note that a typical Rating 3 Comlink can only run 2 programmes before experiencing response degradation.
Also note that a Rating 3 agent can only run 2 programmes before experiencing reposne degradation.

Why scan? Totally useless if the IC only has to operate inside a node.

Finally: There are too many unanswered questions at the moment, to make a general estimation of security for the common man. One has to fix a couple of questions first (which the GM will have to do) as the BBB is not answering them. Thus, every discussion about the topic will be a discussion about interpretations and house rules.

Well, the response of an agent is dependant upon the node it is run on and if they use a node at rating 4 the Agent (Rating 1) can run 4 programs at rating 1, or even more programs with a slight decrease of response.

The security company would not run their agents on the customers node but their own and just have legal access to be inside the node. True, Scan might be useless but perhaps the customer wants the agent to scan his files for virus?

I agree that there are several unanswered questions and I hope that such questions will be updated in Corporate Security for SR4.

This is basically a simple way of making hackers think twice about hackign every joe average on the street.

I would disagree with the statement that the response rating of an agent can be higher than the agents rating itself.

Joe User 2065, like today's Joe User, doesn't have any security that didn't come pre-installed. In other words, they rely on the default OS firewall.

Most of the tech savvy will spend what they can on a proper security suite (Firewall upgrade). Maybe they pick up a "security suite" that checks data files for bombs, looks for virii, etc which I guess would be Analyze 1-3 (books aren't handy).

A handful of J.Users will either have a tech on retainer or subscribe to a service that does data checks. An online service will be like the security suite but it doesn't require the user to buy new software. Basically it's a self-updating security suite that also keeps external logs and may include an option to have an Agent or a real person connect to the Comm when weird things are found.

A tech can hook up the Comm to an external analyzer that can scan the Comm's memory quickly and with high-rating software (Analyze 4+) regardless of the Comm's response. (Basically creating an image and then analyzing the image in a virtual machine.)

I think another thing to remember, with storage not being an issue, many people are going to be storing a lot of their data with some service, obviously not on their commlink. A hacker could find a comm's subscription list and maybe work to hit that host, but those hosts should likely have a lot more security than J.User's comm.

Granted, I know this is just for data, but it makes sense that a lot of important data would just be stored someplace else...

I could see that model being used quite a bit in 2070...even for team communications, a third-party secure service could stream the data just as easily (for a fee) and likely be a lot more secure than any single commlink (without mods).

deek: access rights for this streaming thing would have to be on the comlink. You are just shifting things arround.