Top Ten Ways To Secure Your Computer - And Keep It Running Smoothly

Things all computer users should know, but most do not. If you have an understanding of all of these principals you should never have a major problem with security on your computer. The average computer user does not know how insecure their computers really are.

Passwords

Passwords are an integral part of any computer use and as Bill gates says; the weakest link in the protection of information. A secure password consists of letters, numbers and capitals. For instance, using fluffy as a password, is not a secure password, The phrase is completely letters, and no capitals. however fluffy85 is better, but still not totally secure. Ideally, 19FlFfy85 is the most secure password, using capitals, numbers and letters. Other than the password itself, another top reason why a persons information is compromised is fraudulent emails and phony websites. This brings us to the next topic of Privacy policies.

Privacy Policies

On every website (at least with every company or business website) there should be a privacy policy, which is inherently agreed on when you are browsing the website. All privacy policies in Australia should comply with the privacy and information act, some guidelines are available at http://www.privacy.gov.au/publications/npps01.html. For other countries, please contact your local or state government to find relevant information. These Privacy policies, make sure that your information is protected, a simple rule is if there is no privacy policy, then do not enter in any information. There are companies that endorse and make sure that the privacy policy complies with all the relevant Laws and legislations, however for the majority are based and service sites based in the United States, a company that does this is Trustee™. This logo will only be found on U.S company websites.

SSL Certificates

What are SSL Certificates? SSL certificates, takes the data you enter on your computer, like your name, credit card number for instance, and encrypts it to 128bit key. To break down this to laymans terms, if you where to try and guess a number between 1 and 10, it could take you up to 9 times to get the right number. How about a number 1, followed by 38 zeros, this is a rough approximation of 128bit encryption? If the attacker where to try and gain access to your information, using a computer that could guess 1 trillion numbers per second (which does not exist yet), it could take up to a 2 million, million, million years to gain information. SSL certificates are very important when personal information is entered. Internet Explorer and most other browsers display a little yellow lock somewhere on the page, if the SSL certificate is recognized. However, there are a lot of SSL certificates out there, that are not picked up by Internet Explorer or other browsers. When a website has an SSL normally there is a “click to verify” Button with the organizations logo somewhere on the page. Most very secure, offering 128bit – 1024bit encryption. Generally, these logos indicate a safe site, but there is many more in addition to these two.

Firewalls

Firewalls are either programs or hardware that prevent outside influences from affecting your computer. The way this works is by limiting the information that your computer allows for it to communicate to online. Nowadays Microsoft Windows and other operating systems are integrating software firewalls in with their communications and network settings. This allows your computer to access certain protocols, and block and restricts others. Obviously, hardware firewalls are much more effective. These can make an electronic “cut” in the cord of the other protocols that are not used. Although even hardware firewalls can still be hacked, it makes the process incredibly hard, as the hacker is reduced to a protocol that could be watched or used by the computer at the time he/she is trying to gain access. Even with operating systems such as Microsoft Windows incorporating their own firewalls into their programs, it does not guarantee security.

Even though a true black hat hacker could hack through any program and bypass hardware firewalls, if they were determine enough. You can always slow them down, if you really want to secure your computer. But remember, not to fill your computer with so many programs to prevent hackers that it changes the speed or effectiveness of the computer. If you are really concerned, simply unplug that network line and work off line, then save all your work to a portable media and restart with the network cable plugged back in. That will erase most traces of the file you were working on. Most of the main stream firewalls will do a sufficient job. Such as Norton™ or MacAfee™, keep in mind the more mainstream you go the more hackers are working on getting through that particular piece of software. We use Tiny Personal® Firewall. It takes a while to setup and clarify which protocols are used by you, and which are not. But if you are prepared to take the time for a week or so, then you will find a program like that is considerably hard to break through. This is being used by the US Air force for their computer systems; you can download it at [http://www.brothersoft.com/Utilities_Security_Tiny_Personal_Firewall_81.html].

Virus Protection and removal

Viruses are one of the biggest computer problems in the world today. The majority of computer services includes or only consists of virus removal and protection. A big reason why most people get viruses is that they trust and use mainstream virus protection programs, which are targeted most by the developers of viruses. They are designed specifically to get around Norton, and MacAfee. There is nothing wrong with these mainstream virus scanners, when a new virus comes along, usually they’re on top of if within 24hrs or so. We have found that the best anti-virus, through testing and long term use is Avira AntiVir™. This is a free virus Scanner for personal use and can be found at http://www.free-av.com/.

Cookies

Cookies are temporary files used by your computer. Usually they hold information like your preferences used in a website, or which country you are from (depending on the website). However there are some websites that are able use cookies to allow virus to get through, or keep your personal information, to send off to another website. We recommend deleting your cookies every month or so, depending on your internet usage.

Trojans (Trojan horses)

A Trojan is a type of virus, the name taken from the Trojan horse mythology. It works very much like that myth. They are programs that you willingly install on your computer, and they contain and subprogram in them, to send off information, change settings for hackers, or release a virus. They can be very dangerous. The good news is that most virus scanners pick up Trojans, and a good firewall will prevent the information from sending. You do occasionally, find a program that can sneak past both programs, and you will never even know its running. It is good habit, to periodically check what is starting up when your computer starts. You can do this with a third party program, by checking your registry or by using some administration tools. PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS ENTERING THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE COMPUTER, ANY ALTERATIONS CAN POTENTIALLY DAMAGE THE STARTING OF YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM. Go to the start menu and click run (this may be turned off in the task bar settings). Type “msconfig” and then press enter. In the tabbed menu, there should be a tab named “startup”; click on it and you will see a list of programs that start up when your computer does. You can use the check boxes to stop a program from starting up. If you get to know this list very well, you will quickly know if a new program starts when your computer does, if it is an unknown program, it could well be a Trojan. I cannot stress enough to be careful when you are performing this. If you can, get an experienced computer technician or your local computer whiz to help.

Spy ware and Ad ware

Spy ware and ad-ware are types of Trojans. They usually represent one program, but in installing that program, the programmer puts sponsor ads on your computer. These sponsor ads are nothing but ads on your computer. Most of these are just annoying, not so much bad for your computer. Again, most of these can be fixed using the method described before hand in the Trojans section, but because they are not so much a virus or anything harmful, they can go unnoticed by all the associated programs. There are special programs that are designed to get rid of these types of programs. Programs like ad-aware™ and Spybot™ - Search & Destroy™, we have found these programs to be particularly useful. Driver Updating Another very important thing for you to do on your computer periodically is to update your drivers for all your components. Drivers are the scripts in the computer that make your components work. For instance, your graphics driver contains all the code your graphics card needs to display the right thing on your monitor. Updating these periodically can prevent some hack attempts, and also keeps your computer running smoothly.

This keeps your computer running smoothly even with the installation of newer programs and applications. The most important drivers to update are your graphics and sound drivers. Now if you do not know how to do this yourself, again seek assistance, we will run through it here with you, but there is nothing worse than stuffing up a direction and then having to spend hours trying to fix a mistake. Ok the first step is to find out the manufacturer of the component you are looking to update. You can find this in Control Panel -> System Then in a tab up the top you should find “device manager”, if you are on vista, there is a link to it on the top left of page your looking at. In vista, there is an authorize screen that blacks out the screen for you to allow the program to run. Once you are in the device manager, just browse through the categories, if you are looking to update your display adapter, then look under the category “display adapters” obviously. Then it will show you the manufacturer and the model name. From here, we just go to the manufactures website (usually [http://www.insert-manufacturers-name-here.com] but sometimes its .tw or a weird extension like that) which can be found using Google. Once you have got to the website, look for a support, downloads or drivers section anywhere. Once your there, you just need to find the right driver, download it. And with most they will just all be wrapped up in a nice .exe file. Sometimes they need to be installed another way, but in this case they will have instructions with them, as long as you follow the instructions EXACTLY you will be fine. Now remember you don’t have to update every single driver on your system. A lot of the smaller drivers are updated with a Windows Update™ (www.windowsupdate.com). Mainly your graphics drivers and your sound drivers remain the same through all the updates.

Keeping your computer from going JERKY . The number one hate of computer users is waiting for the computer to load after using a few programs, then having to restart, because everything is just frozen. THIS HAPPENS ON MACS™ TOO, even if they do not like to admit it, sorry it just had to be said. Now there is a few ways to fix this one is with added hardware, adding more RAM will let you use the computer for a lot longer and do a lot more before it gets to the jerky stage. Other ways of doing this is to only open or load one task at a time, even though this is really annoying when you want to open up for music player and your Word editor, Photoshop™, and Internet Explorer™. Opening these one at a time lets the computer process once data set then the next then the next, instead of trying to process all of them at the same time, and getting the “freezing” effect, where it is processing a section of each data-set at the same time.

If you follow everything lined out in this report, you should have no problem keeping your computer safe, secure, and running smoothly.

Tony Schirmer is the owner of the computer news reviews and How-To's site, http://www.tekfix.com.au/ Tekfix is one of the fastest growing computing sites online, striving to share articles covering every aspect of the computer and technology era.