Do You Know How (In)Secure Your Are?
A recent study by Symantec showed that a majority of PC users do, in fact, have antivirus and antispyware software installed and updated. However, many did not have a personal firewall or spam protection. That is not the worst part though. The worst part is that they thought they did.
It is one thing to be unprotected. As long as you know you are, then you can at least exercise caution or be more on guard about the types of threats you might be vulnerable to. It is entirely a different story for users to think they have security protection they do not. It can taint the way they use their PC or the cavalier attitude they might have to surfing the Web. As long as they act as if they have security measures in place that aren't really there, they are at greater risk.
I think that some may not understand all of the bells and whistles of their security software and may wrongly assume that those features they don't understand must be taking care of those threats they also don't understand. But, not all security software is packaged as a suite, and not all suites are created equally. Take a minute to understand what your security software does or does not do, then either invest in the tools to plug the holes, or at least be aware of the fact that you aren't as secure as you had believed.
Comments
Great article, thanks alot
Use GNU/Linux and donīt worry about this things anymore!!!
An article comparing a personal firewall to an operating systems standard firewall would be good
I’ve given up on antivirus years ago. It’s a ploy, and a big waste of money….
Though I _do_ have ClamAV set up on a server, that scans incoming mail for viruses…..it’s fast, light-weight, is opensource, constantly updated (sometimes 2-3 times a day even), and has a great community of support behind it.
Firewall…..well, I do have my OS firewall(s) on/active, and my network is behind a NAT router, with all un-necessary ports closed (unless I deem it necessary to open [port forward] them).
Spam filtering? Just good old gmail
I’ve had live.com mailboxes, hotmail boxes, yahoo boxes, gmail seems to be the best at catching the spam with very few false positives.
The thing I dislike about the commercial firewalls, is the amass of alerts they shoot out at the user(s), making it as if the Internet is out to get them, throwing attack messages, warnings, etc. at them….Windows Firewall is great because it blocks the crap that wasn’t requested to begin with, and works silently.