PC Security Let’s address computer security directly by defining what exactly computer security is: Computer security is the overall process of detecting and preventing unauthorized individuals from gaining access to your PC. Measures can be taken to prevent these unauthorized intrusion attempts which keep the intruders (hackers, cyberterrorists, etc.) from accessing your PC or your home network. Detection processes help to determine if someone is attempting to access your PC or home network, and, if they were successful in doing so, what they were able to do. Detection can also assist you with determining how you can strengthen your defenses against future attacks from intruders. Why should you care if people can access your PC or network from outside your system? Well, put very directly, would you mind it if I reached into your mailbox and opened a letter from your bank and read your bank statement, or if I opened a bill from your credit card company and looked at the statement to see what you were buying and how much you were charging? Of course you would. This is precisely why you should concern yourself with security on the Internet. More and more we as a society are using our PCs to do things that we used to do in person. That is to say, we do our shopping on the Internet, we do our banking and investing on the Internet, and, we even store personal information on our PCs where before the advent of computers we kept this information locked away in a home safe or security storage container at our banks. If someone from cyberspace (a colloquialism for the Internet) could breach the security of your home PC or home network, then they would have the ability to access your personal information or send an email to someone you know without your knowledge. You might say that you don’t do any of these things on the Internet and you don’t keep personal information stored on your PC, so why would anyone want to take control of my PC? The answer is that most intruders breach the security of systems and especially vulnerable PCs on the Internet simply to hide their true identities while they launch attacks on other PCs and networks either deploying virus payloads or sending out emails to others spreading these viruses worldwide. It is extremely easy for intruders to hack into networks and ultimately your PC if they know what they are doing. Intruders, hackers or crackers as they are referred to use devices connected to the Internet to sniff and look for security “holes” which are vulnerabilities in either applications being used by others or in the operating systems that are running on the PCs. As we will discuss further on this site, hackers also look for vulnerabilities in routers on a home network LAN or Local Area Network, and exploit such vulnerabilities to their advantage. We will also discuss on this website the importance of updating your operating system and applications that you run on the PC to ensure that the latest security patches and bug fixes are in place which shield you from potential intrusions. We will look at hardware/software security solutions that you can implement on your PC (the client) or on your LAN (the network) which, when configured properly, will adequately protect you from outsiders who might attempt to breach your security and steal your private data. A recent article on MSNBC News by Bob Sullivan entitled, "Home PC Users Weigh Price of Protection," is worthy of note here. In that article Mr. Sullivan talks about how PC users are overwhelmed today with all the security patches and fixes they’re being told they must download and install and for these reasons they have given up security for privacy. I highly recommend everyone to read this article. Copyright 2006, CAC Network Security Website, All Rights Reserved | This page was last modified on Friday, November 03, 2006 17:14 GMT-05:00 |
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