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Layered Security
~~Mike Baynes, MikesWhatsNews

With the sophistication of the latest virus/worms and hackers it is becoming more difficult to protect ourselves on the Internet. We daily face malicious scripts, virus infected attachments, or phishing scams which attempt to steal our data.

Our best line of defense is a layered approach to security which involves several security features.

The first layer is the hardware firewall, this could be in the form of a Router, a device which allows more than one device to access the internet or your network, or a dedicated computer running as a firewall using a Linux program like SmoothWall

A second layer of your security is an active, always-on, up-to-date Anti-Virus program. An out-of-date AV program will not protect you from the newly created infections which take advantage of the newly discovered holes in your Operating System. It seems the virus writers never sleep.

The third layer is a software firewall. There are several free ones available for the home user and no business should be without a full pro version of one of the many excellent firewalls. Zone Alarm has recently released an update to their firewall to make it XP SP2 compliant. Microsoft's Firewall FAQs

A secure email program is another component to the layered security.  If you are allowing attachments to be opened at random it is only a matter of time before one of them slips past your AV program and infects your system. Also, many AV programs can scan outgoing email (as well as incoming email) to prevent you from accidentally spreading an infection via email.

Internet browsers are another weak point in the security of your computer.  During the recent rash of vulnerabilities, the Firefox browser became very popular, due to its security, not available in the unpatched IE.

A keystone in the security equation is maintaining your OS and its critical updates. Microsoft has been making their security updates available on CD recently and has aggressively been promoting security on their updates page. And Windows XP SP2 is now available. This is one of the largest Service Packs they have ever issued and offers a more secure OS and a long-overdue upgrade of Internet Explorer.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier articles, Spyware, Hijackers,and Parasites are another problem facing the computer users.  They are often bonus programs slipped into a download or agreed to in the fine print of the EULA.  Take the time to see what you are agreeing to.  I have a page with many of the commonly used programs to remove them:   Homepage Hijacking

See Mike's Anti-Virus pages ~ http://virusinfo.hackfix.org.  To subscribe, send a blank email to: virusinfo-request@freelists.org?Subject=subscribe