How to Make Your Computer Secure

Computer security is a billion dollar industry in today's modern world. Identity theft is not something unheard of today. Thousands of spammers, virus makers, and Spyware makers are burning the midnight candle trying to find ways to compromise computer security, steal credit cards, hack networks, steal passwords and break into email systems to steal vital information. Not to be left out, security experts are researching ways and means to protect today's data driven society. It's a mouse and cat game and today's most savvy mouse trap may be good only for the museum tomorrow.

Most ordinary PC users think that computer security is only for big corporations with hundreds of computers running. Little do they know that computer security affects everybody and everybody should be responsible to make sure that their PCs are safe from any kind of attack whether or not they have sensitive data stored whether they use their credit card or not to make online purchases. Computer security should be the responsibility of everybody. The problem with computer security besetting computer security experts right now is that most ordinary user has a passive stance on computer security. They simply don't care. They don't care if the database of a company doing ecommerce has been hacked. They don't care whether they have antivirus or firewall installed. They don't care even if the entire internet goes down for as long as they have not been affected, their credit cards has not been stolen or they have not experienced being infected with a virus. Apathy is the real problem of computer experts.

Some people might ask, how can my unprotected PC contribute to the worldwide computer security problem? The answer is simple. Each PC forms part of a world wide network of computers known as the internet. The internet is like the human body. When one part of the body gets hurt, every part gets affected. If you have a sore thumb, you can't say that the rest of your body is all right. That sore thumb will begin to bug you all day. You will have to do something about it or else it might develop into something else more complicated. This analogy applies to computers as well. One unsafe computer will affect a thousand others, irregardless if the computer is connected to the internet or not. In order to illustrate, let us discuss modern day computer problems. Let's talk about viruses. The outbreak of a virus may be minimized if all computers have antivirus programs. The problem is that when a single computer is infected with a virus and people use that computer and copy files from it through any removable medium or such computer is connected to a local area network or the internet, the virus spreads to all those who has come in contact with that computer.

Another case maybe the utilization by hackers of the so called "Zombie computers" In order to cover their tracks, hackers utilizes the computer of others to attack secure networks. When security experts trace the signal in order to determine where the hacker is located, they will have a problem doing so since the hacker has utilized thousands of zombie machines (unprotected PCs whose security has been compromised because of the lack of security precautions) to confuse those who will try to trace and isolate the hacker's PC. If only owners of those zombie machines took the initiative to make their computers secure, then cyberspace would be a safer world to live in.

So how do you as an ordinary user make your machine more secure? This will be discussed further by the next set of articles.