I’ve been thinking of Computer Security lately, and I have come up with five things to help with your computer security. I actually came up with more than 5, but these are the five that survived. The list after the break.
The list in no particular order is:
- Get an Antivirus program and use it.
- Apply all security patches put out by your OS manufacturer
- Never use an admin account for normal use. Even on your own machine
- Create a login Password and use it
- Enable your spam blocker on your email program or use a third party program like SpamSieve.
One of the things you can do is to get an Antivirus program and then to use it. Allow it to download the virus definitions file. Then let it scan your hard drive regularly. One of the thins I’ve noticed is that people are not willing to let virus programs do the scans that are necessary. Too inconvenient they say. Try replacing your software when you’ve had to do a reinstall of your OS. Then talk to me of inconvenient.
Here is another thing you can do that some people don’t like. Download and apply all the security patches from your OS Vendor. Often these patches are free, and provide some hardening for your OS. Always do this, or let the automated patching system do it’s job.
This is a stealth issue, and a lot of people don’t do it. When you first get your computer, you go through the new user set up, and that wizard makes the first account an admin account. In most OSes the Admin account is close to being on the right hand of God. REally you should make the first account an admin account. Then using that account you need to make a standard user account. This standard user account is going to be your home account. Once Created, log out of the admin account and log back into the standard account.
You should never let an account be created that need no password to log in. Always require a login with a name and password. Some computers and OSes allow you to create a user of a machine without a password. A second thing is to never leave a computer logged in while unattended. All sorts of mischief can be done to your computer if you are logged in and answering nature’s call.
Spam is getting more and more prevalent. If your email client has a spam blocker, then enable it. Or failing that use a third party program like SpamSieve to filter out the spam from your mail queue. I have SpamAssassin working on my server and it does quite well. SpamSieve is a Mac Program, but it does very well dealing with spam as well.
This is not the end all, be all of security guides, but you do these things and you are just that much harder on security threats.
[ad#ad-3]
Related posts:
{ 1 trackback }