Basic Computer Security

This is going to be a basic guide to computer security for home users including the use of applications and common sense Its not foolproof but no security is and if ive missed anything then add it in!

First is first, understand the threats.

Some people, understandably, think that adware, spyware, worms and virusses are the same and this can lead to bad security so first we have to know what each is and what they do.

Adware is basically a small program that sits on your computer and brings adverts to you usually as popups in a web browser, they are very very annoying but usually a low risk threat as they normally do nothing but give you adverts.

Spyware is a program that spies on you and your computer, you might think so what? but a lot of the time they send detailed logs of anything you do to the maker of the program and this will almost always have usernames and passwords to email accounts, website accounts and sometimes to banking accounts and even contain credit card details, obviously thats not good!

Worms are a little like earthworms, well except they travel through computer networks and they contain a "warhead" if you like which is usually another program which will get saved onto your computer, then the worm will carry on its merry way through the network saving this program to everything it finds, the program wuill probably be a virus, spyware or adware so these worms can do a lot of damage to a network! and they dont need a person telling them what to do, they already know what to do!

A virus is similar to a biological virus that attacks an animal by invading and hijacking its cells. A computer virus will get onto a computer and once there it will find a program you already have, possibly an internet browser, once found the virus inserts itself into the programmed code of the browser and whenever that internet browser is used the virus will also start, the virus cannot start on its own so it needs to "infect" another program. They are capable of basically anything, including creating any of the above programs and taking control of the computer and deleting data.

Of course the programs i mentioned can always come together, eg you could have a worm that saves a virus to a computer containing adware and spyware!

Now we know what these things are we can hopefully try to stop them getting onto our computers.

There are a lot of programs on the market saying they will make you safe, which in most cases they will do but the thing to understand is every day, probably every hour a new virus is created, we might never hear about it because it might not do much damage but that doesnt mean its not there ready to hit you and the reason i mention this is that unlike humans computers cant actually think, the way that a program like norton anti-virus works is by comparison. Every day or few days it gets sent a big list and it will look at every program and compare it to this list, now the question is, if the list is sent at 10am and a new virus is made at 11am what happens? Well the anti virus checks this virus but doesnt find it on the list so lets it through and thats where the problem starts. The only way you can do anything about this is by making sure you update your AntiVirus and other security programs as soon as possible every time. It might sound difficult but its really not, no matter what program you use there will be an option of how long to wait before updating and you should set this to the shortest time possible to make sure you are as safe as you can be.

The most basic programs any computer should have are a firewall and antivirus, many programs are a combination of both, which is usefull and easy to manage. You can also get anti-spyware and anti-adware which of course combat adware and spyware, again some programs do include these also.

Some people might think that by having just a firewall they are safe, but they arent, a firewall can only TRY to stop something entering the computer, once its in, the firewall is usless and not a single firewall will stop everything (unless you tell it not to let anything in of course but then you cant use the internet or a network!) And some people think a good anti-virus will keep them safe but it cannot stop anything entering the computer, it can only find it once its in and has probably done damage and again it probably wont find EVERY adware/spyware/virus there is. So you can see the problem and probably you can see the best solution is to have both, An antivirus including anti-spyware and anti-adware and also a firewall and keep them all updated to the max!

Prevention and cure are only two thirds of this tutorial though because at some point something will get in and do damage, its a certainty, how much damage might vary from your home page changing to your computer not starting up at all. When something like that happens you have to have a plan.

The best plan is to have several backups, not just one. you should make one shortly after you get the machine, then another once you have installed all the applications you want and then every few months. In windows XP there is the handy "system restore" which has saved me a lot of hassle but it doesnt always work so you cant rely on it especialy if the computer is really damamge and does not start up. So you should always have backups on removable disks, nowadays a DVD is the best solution as cds could take up at the least 3Cds possibly up to 7 or 8 if you have a lot of games or music on the computer. The dvds should all be labbelled according to the date they were done and stored safely. But before you whack a DVD in and copy your hard drive to it you must know that this wont work. You will need the installation disks of the operating system you have installed for re-installing the operating system and a small program to load the backups onto the computer. There are several programs that will do this including Norton ghost and several freeware equivalents for unix/linux windows and i presume, mac. They will usually come on a disk and this disk will boot your computer into a special mode where you can easilly use the backup disks, and it will guide you through this process. the most important thing is to continually save all work and special data onto 2 or 3 DIFFERENT disks, such as a flash disk the hard drive and a CD/DVD this will make it very hard for you to loose it.

but also remember that if you do have any virusses etc.. on your computer these will be backed up also so you should do a full system wide anti-virus anti-adware and anti-spyware scan before the backup to minimise this threat.Always remember at some point you will get one of these programs but its definately not the end of the world as everyone gets it and as a home user you have less to worry about, simply follow the steps and you shouldnt be too badly affected, but spare a thought for network technicians dealing with 500 computers all being attacked at the same time! Poor fellows!