Home Computer Security

Your computer and the information on it are valuable resources that other people want. In this information age, you need to take a few basic steps to protect your computers at home. Thankfully, there are free and easy ways to do all of these things.

And yes you need to be doing on thing from each of these categories. Why? None of them are perfect, so you need multiple layers protect from everything. We call this idea defense in-depth. For example: In your car you use locks on the door, a lock on the ignition, seat belts, and airbags. All of them protect you in different ways. In the same way your should do these four things to protect your computer and the information you store on it:

Patch - Microsoft releases dozens of patches a year, many of them need to be applied right away because people start exploiting them right away. If you have Apple’s OSX, or Microsoft’s Windows 2000 or XP it’s easy. Just have patches installed automatically. Here’s how to do that step by step:

Anti-Virus Software - You need it, you know you need it, but you just don’t want to pay for it. I don’t blame you, me neither. There are some good free options out there now:

Anti-Spyware Software - Spyware is one of those new threats that’s particularly nasty. The more innocent things cause a bunch of pop-ups or change your browser home page. The most malicous things will take complete control of your computer, use it to attack other people, or send out a bunch of spam. You don’t want any of those things. Here’s a few free things that can detect and clean up spyware:

  • LavaSoft’s Ad-Aware (Personal Edition) - Ad-aware has been around as long as any other tool and is still free. You have open it and tell it to scan your computer, so it’s not a proactive as some other solutions, but it does a good job.
  • Microsoft’s Anti-Spyware (Beta) - Even though it’s beta, this is the best Anti-Spyware Software I’ve seen. When any software makes a potentially dangerous change, it pops up to alert you. It also automatically scans your computer regularly.
  • Trend Micro Anti-Spyware for the Web - Like their web-based anti-virus scanner, Trend Micro makes this quick and easy web-based tool. Handy if you suspect spyware but don’t want to install complicated software.

Personal Firewall - When you connect to the Internet usually nothing stands between you and the bad guys. They can try all day to try to break in unless you stop them. This is what a personal firewall does. They come in 2 basic varieties (you may need both): Hardware and Software.

  • Hardware: When you buy one of these, it maybe called a Router or Wireless Gateway, but the basic concept is it allows you to connect multiple computers to your Internet connection. The default for these is to allow everything out and nothing back in. A hardware firewall is probably enough if you have a couple of desktop computers on your network. If you have a laptop that you ever take off your home network (like to Starbucks or a friends house) then you need a software firewall also.
  • Software: A software fireware does the same basic thing as a hardware firewall: control what can move in and out of you comupter. Only in this case it’s an application that runs on your computer instead of a seperate piece of equipment. The Windows XP SP2 Firewall and OSX Firewall really is good enough. If you have those it’s enough.

Confused? Overwhelmed? There’s some great video step-by-step tutorials on how to do all these things on this site.

More questions? Email me.