PC or Personal Computer security is an important issue these days and it certainly helps to take the necessary precautions to protect your PC especially if you are online a lot or even if it is connected to the internet fulltime just downloading the latest movies and music (hopefully I am not promoting piracy with this). Either way you need to keep your PC secure and safe at all times and in the area of PC security (like everything else) prevention is better than cure, and keeping your PC from getting attacked is a whole lot better than getting attacked/hacked and then trying to fix it. Sometimes there is no easy fix and you might have to end up reinstalling the OS and all software from scratch or better still go back to an old image if you do use imaging software and have a copy of a previous image. This imaging process does end up saving a lot of time from having to do a fresh install of the OS and all other software in the event of a system crash or the system being hacked, but that will be another post. For this post, I will limit it to ways you can protect your PC and keep it secure when you are online and practice safe browsing, so here we go.
Anti-Virus – The most important tool you will need when going online (and even otherwise) is an antivirus that is good, has regular updates and scores really high on Virus Bulletin. Virus Bulletin or VB is an organization that runs independent tests on the latest antivirus, antimalware, tools, etc., and awards a VB100 Award to Antivirus Products that perform to the expected/set parameters. During the testing process, “VB focuses on virus detection rates, scanning speed, as well as looking at how each product fares when scanning a set of files that are known to be clean. In order to display the VB100 logo, an anti-virus product must have demonstrated in our tests that:
• It detects all In the Wild viruses during both on-demand and on-access scanning.
• It generates no false positives when scanning a set of clean files.
Just visit http://www.virusbtn.com/ for more details. You will have to register on the website though registration is free. Virus Bulletin is a good source for narrowing down on your choice of an Antivirus. My recommendation would be to go for a free Antivirus with many of the free versions performing as well as the professional/paid versions. My recommendation would be for Avast, something I personally use, and a close second would be AVG Free, something I have used a lot in the past.
Firewall – Just as important as an antivirus is a firewall. A firewall will protect your system from hackers gaining access to it especially when it is connected to the internet on always on broadband which is quite the norm these days. A firewall will let you decide which programs can have internet access and which cannot and this way you control automatic updates of all the software installed on your system and a firewall will also alert you to programs that try to access the internet without your explicit authorization to do so. More importantly a firewall will protect hackers from accessing your system via the internet and will make your system invisible in fact on the internet. In such a stealth mode, you will be able to get on the internet, but your system will be hidden and thereby render every attack against you useless or rather you will be invisible and hence immune from every attack. My recommendation for a firewall is Comodo Firewall and another excellent alternative is ZoneAlarm.
Anti-Spyware/Malware/Adware – Ewido was an excellent choice in this department and being totally free with the resident scanner disabled in the freeware version. Ewido has since been bought over by AVG who have integrated it with their antivirus product and internet security suite. Ewido renamed as AVG Anti-Spyware is available for free with AVG Anti-Virus free, but with limited capabilities and also Ewido still offers an online spyware scanner free, but this is something I have not tried out for myself so I cannot comment on it. There are a couple of good alternatives to Ewido, Ad-Aware from Lavasoft being the prime candidate, and Spybot Search & Destroy a good follow up act.
Internet Browser – This is the most important of all since it’s the primary way your system will connect to the internet. No matter what browser you choose to go with, firstly make sure you stop using Internet Explorer immediately. More secure alternatives are Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome. I have used Mozilla Firefox in the past, but had settled on Opera as my mainstay for many years, however, since the release of Google Chrome that has become the default browser on my system since its faster and uses less system resources even with multiple tabs open.
OS Updates – Enable automatic updates of your OS. You need not enable automatic installation and can have the system notify you when an update is available in case you are worried about Microsoft installing software on your system that you might not want, but OS updates are a must. In fact security loopholes in your OS can only be fixed by the OS vendor and they do provide such fixes/patches via automatic updates to the OS. It is of paramount importance that you get these fixes/patches as soon as they are available and hence the recommendation to keep automatic updates to the OS turned on. No matter what antivirus or protection you use, if your OS is not protected by fixes/patches via OS updates then you are only asking for trouble.
Hope this helps. Any other thoughts, suggestions and comments are welcome and appreciated.
Thanks for the tips Rajiv and good to see you back. Were you on vacation?
Hi Ajith,
Not really, but was busy shopping for a Plamsa TV and was busy visiting various stores and checking out the quality, etc. Plan to get one soon and a PS3 or a Blu-Ray DVD Player or at the very least an 1080p upscaling DVD player.
How is everything with you? Great here in fact! Hopefully might visit Bangalore this month end though its a toss up between Bangalore and Vizag. Shall keep you posted and catch up with you if I am in Bangalore. Take care!
Very helpful information.Except the first one i.e. Antivirus, I do not have the rest. I will update the remaining four soon.
Rajiv you mentioned all basic security programs very necessary for all PC users as Firewall,antivirus,antispyware and anti-malware.I think if users can afford some money they will get all these in internet security suits which are very effective .
Yup, I totally agree with you, but some of these suites are quite expensive in the Indian context especially the better ones. Case in point would be Nod32 from Eset, I believe the best antivirus and security suite, but even the basic one costs 60 USD which per today's market is Rs. 2936 which is quite expensive for many. Also, per VB tests some of the free AV programs perform as well as any professional AV program.
Hi there, I found a good page for Windows Security on MajorGeeks. See 14 steps listed here, http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=4…. I am a fan of freeware, and there is plenty of good choices there. Most suites slow your computer down too much.