Posts Tagged ‘firewall’

Buy Anti Virus – Protect Your Identity Online

June 27th, 2010

Identity theft is a fact of life these days. Every day, a whole lot of people have their identity stolen by hackers and criminals who then use the information to open credit card accounts and buy things in their name. A lot of these people are very careful about protecting their sensitive information except when they are online. The Internet makes it very easy to get banking done and purchase things fast. However, if you are not be careful on what you do on your computer, you may be leaving yourself open to a hack attack.

I do not know about you, but I get a few scam emails everyday asking me to provide my bank account number to a person in Nigeria and receive $1M in return. You should avoid falling for these scams. It is the easiest way to compromise your sensitive information.

Phishing attacks are all too common these days. You should never click on links you get in your e-mail from companies such as Chase and PayPal. Not that these companies want to steal your information. Rather, there are many criminals who send emails to people, claiming to be from these companies. As soon as you click on these links and log in, your information is compromised.

Another way you can have your identity stolen is by being negligent about viruses when you are online. Many online sites such as a few P2P sites put harmful software on your computer. A keylogger can steal your password and send it to a third-party system. You should take time to buy an anti-virus and firewall system to protect yourself against hack attacks. It would be even better if you can afford a cheap laptop to just use for online banking.

Finally, never store your passwords on your computer and make sure you do not submit your password to a non-secure website. It is not only reckless, but can leave you susceptible to online identity theft. Buy Anti Virus with personal firewall.

While no tactic is foolproof here, by following the above steps you can significantly lower the chances of your data being stolen by criminals. You should also invest in an ID tracking service to get alerts in case your information is compromised. One ca not be too careful these days.

Looking for an Identity monitoring service to protect your ID theft? Try buy anti virus software to protect you.

Should You Buy Anti-virus Software Or Get a Free Version?

October 12th, 2009

Which is more beneficial to you buy anti virus software or downloading the free version online? Computers have become so important in so many parts of our personal and professional life that it is very important to safeguard the data stored in them against viruses which are designed to destroy or steal it. Many people got this kind of attack everyday so it is important for you to protect your data.

However, many people take this very lightly and never think twice about the damage that can be caused by such viruses. So thinking that they are saving money they go for free online downloads of antivirus applications. What they do not realize is that even these free antivirus downloads might be spam or can inject virus into the system that may harm your computer network systems.

Those free versions that are not malicious in their intent may however be very ineffective in detecting and destroying viruses. Much antivirus freeware is outdated and not powerful enough to fight the virus or remove it fully from the system. Most of them can not help you to create a secure network.

Keeping this in mind many software companies are trying to cash in on the demand for a good antivirus software. So they introduce antivirus software which is powerful enough to fight any form of virus and it also provided one year free upgrade after which time the user can update the virus for a small additional fee. This software is normally moderately priced you can buy anti virus at ($25 – $65) and can provide a complete solution for your systems security and safeguard the data from virus threats.

When you become a paid customer of an antivirus program you are entitled to certain special benefits which you are devoid of when you download free antivirus software. You will need to pay for customer support, possible after a short period of free support, but the most serious disadvantage is that the software is not automatically updated regularly. This prevents it being effective against new viruses which come on coming day after day.

Whereas when you buy anti virus software the software company is responsible for all your queries related to the software and it’s functioning. As the competition among the antivirus software companies increases more are offering increasing functionality (i.e. antiadware, privacy features etc) and better value. Free 24/7 live support is also becoming offered by some of the big players. Moreover the software that you buy will entitle you for a free upgrades for at least one year and after that you need to pay only a small fee to upgrade and continue using the software.

Therefore many benefits are experienced when a user buy anti virus software. Now, this may come as no surprise but it is all too common for people to pay more in the long term by taking the cheap short term option. Even if you already had a firewall you still need to buy anti virus to protects your network systems.

Anti virus PC

October 12th, 2009

Anti virus PC is something you need when you working with computer. There are some simple steps you must take to avoid becoming a victim of computer viruses and also stop from spreading viruses to others. Here are some things that you can and should do.

Email Issues to watch

Never open an E-mail with an attachment you were not expecting.

The latehttp://www.asidojaya.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=88&message=1st batch of virus programs are often spread by E-mail. Even if your anti-virus program does not warn you about the attached file and even if the eMail appears to come from someone you know or from internal network systems, do not open it if you were not expecting it, and if you were expecting it, only open it AFTER scanning it with your up-to-date virus software. So please be wise here.

Scan ALL incoming email attachments (regardless of who sent it).

Be sure to run each attachment you plan to open through the anti-virus check. Do this even if you recognize and trust the sender; malicious code, like Trojan horses, can slip into your system by appearing to be from a friendly source.Turn off the ‘automatic preview’ in your email program.

Automatically previewing an email message has the exact same effect as opening and reading an email. My experience of the newest internet worms, trojans, and viruses simply need to have an email message read in order for them to be activated. Turning off the preview feature allows you to scan any email BEFORE you actually read it.Disk Issues to watch

Don’t boot from a floppy disk.

Floppies are one of the most common ways viruses are transmitted. If you are using a floppy while working on your computer, remove it when you shut the machine off or the computer will automatically try to boot from the floppy, perhaps launching any viruses on the disk. ANd also do not boot from flash disk or thumb drive.

Web Based Issues

Keep your web browser set to its highest security level.

Its a pain to get the warning messages on every other web page you visit, but its the best way to protect yourself – especially if you use Microsoft Internet Explorer and Outlook.

Don’t download programs from the Web.

Unreliable sources such as Internet newsgroups or Web sites that you haven’t heard of may be willing providers of viruses for your computer. This includes freeware, screensavers, games, and any other executable program – any files with an “.exe” or “.com” extension, such as “coolgame.exe.” Check to see if the site has anti-virus software running on their side. Avoid downloading files you can’t be sure are safe. If you do have to download from the Internet, be sure to scan each program before running it. Save all downloads to one folder, then run virus checks on everything in the folder before using it. Regardless of where you download from, ALWAYS scan downloaded software.

Routine Maintenance

Make regular back ups of important data you do it everytime you finish your work. You can store your backup using external drive. Make it a habit to back up all of your most important files at least once a month. Store the back up discs in a safe place. If your office has regular backup strategy using tape backup use it.

Clean any virus/worm/trojan off your computer

Using your antivirus software, perform a full system scan of your PC, hopefully it will detect and remove the virus. If a virus was detected, restart your computer and run the full scan again. Sometime the virus will keep reappearing, due to the evolving nature of viruses. Symantec is particularly fast at providing removal tools should you ever get a virus or worm infesting your computer.

What is a removal tool? Well simply put it is a simple software that will scan your computer for infections, and then remove them from your machine. You most often need this if your machine got infected BEFORE you installed antivirus software.Top Considerations for PC Protection

And the final and most important two things to do to keep your computer clean and make sure it does not spread viruses to other computers…

Install a Firewall

If you use a broadband/high-speed method to access the internet, you need to get a firewall. A firewall is a program that defends your computer from hackers who attempt to gain direct access to your computer over the Internet. There is a very good firewall program called ZoneAlarm that will do the trick if you use Windows.

Install and use a high-quality anti-virus program.

This is the key to protecting your computer. Buy one of the major anti-virus programs – Norton Anti-Virus, PC-Cillin, or McAfee Anti-Virus. The primary benefit of the commercial packages is the frequency and ease of updating the virus definition files that these programs use to detect viruses. With new viruses popping up all the time, unless your protection software is kept updated, you start to become ever more vulnerable to infection.

Get immediate protection.

Configure your anti-virus software to launch automatically on start-up and run at all times. This will provide you back-up protection in case you forget to scan an attachment, or decide not to. And in case you forget to load up your anti-virus software, configuring it to start by itself will ensure you get immediate protection anyway. The top antivirus software programs all do this (but only if you have one installed on your computer). You do have current antivirus software installed right?

Learn how to remove blackworm virus and how to easily block trojan horses, spyware, computer viruses, and other malicious software in the future.

Priyo Wibowo | MCP

Beginners Guide – Secure Network

October 9th, 2009

: Image via Wikipedia

Secure network is vitally important for most network systems. Whilst email viruses and denial-of-service attacks (DoS attack) may cause us headaches on our home systems, for businesses, these sorts of attacks can cripple a network for days – costing businesses hundreds of millions each year in lost revenue. Not to mention corporate legitimate to clients.

Creating secure network to prevent this type of malicious attack is usually of paramount importance for network administrators, and while most invest heavily in some forms of security measures there is often vulnerabilities inadvertently left exposed. As we always heard that security is as secure as the weakest link.

Firewalls are the best place to begin when you are trying to develop a secure network. A firewall can be implemented in either hardware or software, or most commonly a combination of both. Firewalls are used to prevent unauthorized users from accessing private networks connected to the Internet, especially local intranets. All traffic entering or leaving the intranet pass through the firewall, which examines each message and blocks those that do not meet the specified criteria. If the packet do not meet security criteria then the system will not allowed those packets entering network system.

Anti-virus software works in two ways. Firstly it acts similarly to a firewall by blocking anything that is identified in its database as possibly malicious (viruses, Trojans, spyware etc). Secondly Anti-virus software is used to detect, and remove existing malware on a network systems or workstation.

One of the most over-looked aspects of secure network is time synchronization. Network administrators either fail to realise the importance of synchronization between all devices on a network or the system simply don’t work. Failing to synchronize a network is often a common security issue. Not only can malicious users take advantage of computers running at different times but if a network is struck by an attack, identifying and rectifying the problem can be near impossible if every device is running on a different time.

Even when a network administrator is aware of the importance of time synchronization they often make a common security mistake when attempting to synchronize their network. Instead of investing in a dedicated time server that receives a secure source of UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) externally from their network using atomic clock sources like GPS, some network administrators opt to use a shortcut and use a source of Internet time.

There are two major security issues in using the Internet as a time server. Firstly, to allow the time code through the network a UDP port (123) has to be left open in the firewall. This can be taken advantage of by malicious users who can use this open port as an entrance to the network system. Secondly, the inbuilt security measure used by the time protocol NTP, known as authentication, doesn’t work across the Internet which means that NTP has no guarantee the time signal is coming from where it is supposed to.

To ensure that you have a secure network, isn’t it time you invested in an external dedicated NTP time server?