According to one of the candidates currently running for President of the United States, my financial situation is a figment of my imagination. The record home foreclosures and bankrupcties, $4 a gallon gasoline, record national debt, higher unemployment, and spike in food prices are all a matter of my perception. Of course, if I had so many houses I couldn't count them, or thought that $5 million is the benchmark for being 'rich', I might not see the country crumbling around me either.
But, I gave it a shot. I assumed the venerable Senator from Arizona knows something I don't and that all of these issues are purely a matter of my perception and that if I stop whining and just change my mind about how I view the world, everything will be better. Apparently though, the manager at Best Buy and the customer service people at Amazon have not yet gotten McCain's message. No matter how much I altered my perception, or asked in my best, non-whiny voice, they still expected actual money in exchange for their products. I tried to explain that money, or my lack of it, was really just in their head, but apparently they can't buy groceries with my idealistic outlook any better than I can.
So, I am back to believing that money actually does matter, and that not having it is a real, factual, not-in-my-head problem. Sorry McCain. Judging by the actual facts and statistics summing up the state of our great nation, it appears that there is a very real problem with the economy and that there is a pretty good chance that you are impacted as well. That being the case, you may not have the $50 to $100 of discretionary income to get one of the retail security suites.
Thankfully, there are very capable tools and applications available for free that you can use to protect your computer against malware, unauthorized access, and other threats without spending any money. A standard security suite includes antivirus, personal firewall, antispyware, and perhaps some phishing scam protection or intrusion detection capabilities. There may be other features in some packages, but these are the primary ones. Take a look at the following links to see what kinds of tools are available for you to download and implement for free:
You can refer to the Free Tools section for even more security tools and applications you can download without spending any money. For more information on building a do-it-yourself PC security suite read this NetworkWorld article.