Essential Steps To PC Security
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a blogger or a businessman, when it comes to security it’s better to be safe than sorry. Here are some useful tips by Fred Langa on how to protect your data:
Close The Holes
All software – bar none – contains bugs, errors, omissions, and security holes. No brand or vendor or source is immune. Therefore, obtaining and applying security patches as they become available must be a top priority in keeping your PC safe and secure. Most vendors offer automated or semi-automated tools to help stay current. The most obvious and popular are Microsoft’s WindowsUpdate and Office Update. Most vendor Web sites also offer index pages or catalogs of all to-date updates, letting you zero in on any you may have missed previously. For example, Microsoft’s ‘Security Updates’ meta page is here. Whatever software you use, start the year off right by ensuring you’re 100% up to date with all essential patches, updates, and bug fixes.
Block Intruders
Just about everyone now realizes the necessity of some kind of firewall to block malicious attacks or connections from external sources. And just about everyone has access to at least a basic desktop firewall, such as the simple one built into XP. (More info: See this or this).
But there’s still confusion and misinformation about the necessity of a desktop firewall if a given PC is already protected by a hardware firewall or the actions of a router, NAT, or similar devices. While those separate devices are excellent against external intrusion, most are all but useless against ‘phone home’ exploits and similar ‘attack from within’ used by some malicious software (‘malware’): These malicious outbound connections appear to originate inside a given PC, and so are automatically allowed by most external defenses.
In sharp contrast, the better desktop firewalls block or flag all outbound connections at first activation, letting you prevent ‘phone home’ and similar covert outbound connections before they start. So: Use a desktop firewall, even if your PC is also protected by a separate external firewall.
You can see which firewalls are rated most highly by your fellow users in ‘Readers Rate Desktop Firewalls‘. And there’s lots more information available in ‘How Much Protection Is Enough?‘; ‘Norton Antivirus And The Single-Layer Defense Fallacy‘; and ‘Four Myths of Online Security.’
Continue reading: Stop Infections.
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