Computer Security –
Part 1Viruses, worms, back-door vulnerabilities and similar concerns worry all computer users, and well they should. How often have you had an e-mail returned to you as undeliverable, only to discover that you never sent it? Someone with your name in his or her e-mail address book picked up a worm or virus that sent e-mail to everyone in his or her directory. It’s insidious. But there are ways to protect your computer.
Anti-Virus Protection
This is a MUST! You must have some anti-virus protection and you must keep it up to date! I strongly recommend Norton Anti-Virus as the best product on the market. You purchase it once, and then purchase annual upgrades for a lower price. It automatically updates the virus protection on your computer, and is the easiest product to use. Most people consider it the best thing out there. I do. You can find it at http://www.symantec.com. Set Norton for automatic updates and scan your computer for viruses at least weekly (you can even schedule it to do it for you).
Note: Bundled products, such as Norton Internet Security, which contains anti-virus and a firewall, often do not work well together. If you need anti-virus, a firewall and/or something else, I urge you to get separate products.
If Norton finds a virus on your computer, it will quarantine it (put it into a special portion of your hard drive). I then suggest deleting it and then defragging your computer to ensure it’s gone.
What Viruses Can Do
When I talk about viruses, I’m including worms and all the collective “nasties” that bad guys get into your computers. About the most innocent worm is the one that e-mails everyone in your address book and then hooks their address books and e-mails everyone in theirs and on and on. Since most people are protected from this kind of stupidity, it won’t hurt you. But until you get that worm out of there, it may keep doing it—and that you don’t need. The very worst that can happen? Someone can completely take over your computer. That means they know everything that’s in it, any stored secretive information, all your files, etc. If you keep passwords stored on your computer, they have those too. If you keep financial information on there, they have those. Your computer has now just become their computer. That’s as bad as it gets. Another common scenario is for the virus to just come in and wipe out your entire hard drive.
What’s worse? Losing your hard drive or having someone take over your computer? Well, you can rebuild your hard drive by simply reinstalling your system and then running an anti-virus scan on it to ensure it’s clean. And you have to rebuild all your data and e-mail information and so on. That’s a lot of work, but if you keep regular backups (at least monthly), your system is all there up to a month ago. If someone, on the other hand, takes over your computer, they can do anything they want. They can send e-mail messages to your friends. They can invade your privacy. They might be able to get into your password-protected sites. There is an enormous amount of damage that can be done.
There are three important lessons here:
1. Have a good anti-virus program, keep it up to date (be sure it automatically updates itself) and scan your system every few weeks.
2. Have at least one firewall. I strongly recommend a hardware firewall (router) and at least one software firewall. The one that comes with SP2 is quite good. Many people also use ZoneAlarm. This is especially important if you are always online (e.g., with cable modem).
3. Watch your e-mail and what you open. Never open e-mail attachments from anyone you don’t know. Use common sense, and you will survive to compute another day.
