Alright, so you’re still reading this series and you’re thinking. Look, I’m not protecting national security secrets. All I’m doing is (running a business|emailing my grandkids|using the web for research). True, good point. You’re not at the defense department. OK. Let’s say you just use your computer for email and web browsing. That’s low priority […]
In a small, trusted network you might be able to get away with weak passwords for file sharing for instance. What’s a weak password? Anything you might find in a dictionary. Most people don’t realize this, but there are programs designed to crack passwords. They’re designed to take a dictionary file and run through it […]
Once more into the breech… Ok you’ve taken account of the software and services on your pc. The next thing we need to talk about is knowing your network. Do you have any wireless access points? Not sure? Print servers? How many pcs? Are any of them portables? Public access? Are all of them secured? […]
Deep breath time. We’ve covered a lot of good topics and it’s important at this point to take a close look at what we’ve talked about and think. “Am I overwhelmed?” If so that’s fine. Maybe you don’t have enough time to think about all of this network security stuff. Maybe, no matter how hard […]
OK – the last couple of entries got into some heavy lifting and some real learning on your part. Learning about what software needs to run, what services are running, updating them to keep current on security patches. We even talked about securing services listening for outside connections and limiting them to what is absolutely […]
This one is going to be tougher. Of what we’ve looked at so far this will probably take more work and learning than any of the others. The good news is, depending on your situation you may need to do less here. IF you have decided that your pc (or network) has ports open to […]
Okay – so after the last article you’ve inventoried what software you use on a PC and you know what services (server’s) the pc runs that you’ve told it to. You even know what passes as “normal” startup programs. Now it’s time to put that to use. It’s time to keep up with updates for […]
Ok, so you’ve got a hardware firewall and you’ve got antivirus. You’re safe right? Well, not entirely. I’ve mentioned the flaws of antivirus. It’s always a step behind. A firewall doesn’t protect against unknown viruses, so what else is there to do? I’m going to tackle this in two steps. The first is to know […]
Ok, the first two entries thus far, hardware firewalls and software firewalls have been fairly operating system independant. A hardware firewall is best, but if that’s not possible a software firewall will do until you get a hardware firewall setup. This next item is (currently) a must have for Windows users. However, Mac and Linux […]
Do I really need a hardware firewall? I’m running XP Service Pack 2 with the built in firewall? (or norton, or zonealarm?) Well, personal firewalls (the name that software firewalls go by) are good for a great many things that hardware firewalls AREN’T. They do have their limitations though and I’ll try to cover those […]
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