Home computers are popular among intruders. Home computers with internet connections usually stay connected and this is a good time for intruders or hackers to do their ill will. Intruders may steal your bank records, credit cards information and thus spend your money without your permission.

Your computer including the hard disk space, your processor and your internet connection will also be at risk from hackers. Unscrupulous individuals deliver viruses in your computer by hacking your system.

In order to protect your home computer, you will need the following:

Install Antivirus programs
Be careful in opening emails
Install a firewall program
Backup important files
Use unique password

Install Antivirus programs

Virus may harm your computer including the files in it. If virus enters your computer it may be hard to delete it entirely because virus signature oftentimes lingers in your computer system.

Thus, it is important for you to install an antivirus program. By installing an antivirus program you can avoid virus entering your system.

Scan your computer for viruses using the anti-virus program to avoid damage virus can do to your computer.

Be care in opening emails

If you see an email from a sender that you do not know, never open this email. Some viruses are passed on through file attachments. Thus, you will need to avoid opening emails from unknown senders especially those with attachments.

If someone you know accidentally passed a virus to you, make sure that your antivirus program is working properly.

Install a Firewall program

Use a firewall especially if you have internet connections at home. Some malware enter your system when you download free softwares. Even without downloading softwares, some hackers can enter your system through some other means.

It is thus important that the firewall works properly. This is to avoid intruders entering your computer and thus affecting the usefulness of your home computer.

Backup important files

To ensure that you can protect your computer and your files as well, keep a backup of your files in a CD or an external drive. This is to ensure that if your computer system develops issues, you can still retrieve your important files from the backup.

Use unique password

Your password may work to protect you as a person. Your password may also protect your computer from intruders. The most important protection you will need from using passwords in your computer is the protection of your bank details, credit cards details and even your computer system.

Never use your name or the name of anyone in your family as a password. By using capital letters, small letters and numbers in your password, you are creating a unique password that will work to protect your home computer.

When you have a computer and you work on a network one of the most important things you can provide for you business is good network security. This term describes the things that make up the underlying network infrastructure, plus policies that have been set up by the administrator of the network system. The security is in place to protect the network against people receiving unauthorized access to databases, communication and other valuable information on your network.

Unfortunately, trying to make your network more secure can be somewhat difficult because there are numerous points that a person can attack in their attempt to get access. This act of getting onto a network your not allowed is called hacking. In trying to setup network security the administrator is taking measures that will prevent any attempts or success in gaining network access, even from one of your own computers.

In that case, if access cannot be gained to one computer the network is safe. It is possible to stop a hacker during the beginning of the attack, but some may get in further than you would like. Some of these attacks are, of course, a virus that can be set lose in your computer and thus corrupting the network and possibly create a problem with all the computers on the network if it’s not caught in a timely manner.

Most security precautions for networks require that any users with access to the network need to be authenticated. This means that you will probably have not only a username but a distinct password to use to access the network as well. Once the computer verifies that this information is correct it will allow you access to the network. This is a great way to prevent someone who isn’t allowed access from getting onto the system, but it will not block worms that can be transmitted via the network. In order to fight this you should get what is called an intrusion prevention system, it will help to identify worms and anything that may be malicious in nature and stop it from accessing your network.

The network administrator may also use a decoy such as a Honey pot that will hopefully act as a warning tool and prevent further access to those unauthorized users. For a home network it is fairly easy to set up security, but with bigger companies it becomes a bit harder.

Ways to protect your home are firewalls, and software programs that watch for viruses like Norton. With a medium sized business you will need a firewall that is more advanced with a much stronger Antivirus, in addition to changing of passwords on a monthly basis.

Larger businesses will want a very strong firewall, a strong Antivirus, change of passwords bi-weekly, network analyzer. Even schools need to protect their networks with an adjustable firewall, strong Antivirus, and many other things. As you can tell as you go up in size of company the security measures to take to protect your network become more in depth.

Sending emails or electronic mails afford you with the convenience of easily sending messages to the recipients. While in the olden days, your letters will reach the recipients several days or weeks after you have mailed your letter, emails can do this job in minutes. It is therefore convenient to be sending messages through email.

However, this modernity is also a playground for crooks to harm you and your computer. The spread of viruses have become rampant that many companies fall victim to the spread of viruses. Computer virus can damage the programs in your computer, delete files, reformat your computer or at worse cause your computer systems to crash.

Some viruses are not very damaging but it may slowdown your computer because it uses large amount of memory. This will cause difficulty in working on your computer.

To avoid the damages that viruses may cause, find below two important things to consider.

Install and use anti-virus programs

Anti-virus programs are designed to block the damages that viruses may do to your computer. You may also check for anti-malware programs to ensure that malwares or malicious softwares will not enter your computer.

It may also be necessary that even if you have an anti-virus program installed, run this anti-virus programs periodically. Especially if you are experiencing slowdown in your computer system, run the antivirus program just to be sure.

Avoid downloading email attachments

Email attachments may carry with it computer viruses that may do harm to your computer. Mere opening of malicious attachments will cause the virus to run amuck in your computer system.

Before you open an email with attachment, think of the following:

Do you know the sender?
Have you received an email from the sender?
Are you expecting an email from the sender?
Analyze the subject line and the sender; do you think it makes sense getting this email from the sender?

Spam mails are not only annoying, they may also be damaging. Thus, check emails even before you open them. If the email meets the requirements above, then may be you can open the email, however, even if you have received an email from the sender but this person is not entirely known to you, ensure that you run an anti-virus program to check the attachment.

Some experts advise that if the sender is entirely unknown to you and he is sending an email with attachment, immediately delete the message.

Thus, if it is your turn to send an email to a new contact, send an email without attachment first. Tell them who you are, why you are sending the email and ask if you can send them attachments. This is to ensure that your email will not end up in the recycle bin.

Being careful with sending and receiving email is a protection you and your computer needs. This is to avoid the damages including personal information stealth.

Any computer that is connected to the internet is in danger of being overrun by intruders. Those intruders may be hackers, spyware, adware, viruses, and so much more. No matter who or what the intruder is, it is done in an effort to steal information from your computer. That information can be financial information, personal information, or information about your surfing habits. This is so that companies know what type of pop-up ads to send your way. That is why you need certain tools for your computer to stay connected and protected when you’re on the internet.

Staying protected

There are many ways in which you can stay protected when you’re on the web. Those ways include the following:

Spyware remover - Spyware is a malicious program that is implanted onto your computer. When you click on a certain ad or visit a website that has it imbedded into its code, that spyware is then transferred to your computer. You need a good spyware remover to make sure you can get rid of it if it finds its way onto your machine. If you have spyware, third parties are recording your surfing habits so that they can bombard you with ads that match what you’re looking at. It will slow your machine down and can also cause it to crash, which is why a spyware remover is a must.

Adware remover - Adware remover works the same way as a spyware remover. You may notice that all of these pop-up ads get into your computer. They also slow down your machine, which is why you need an adware remover to take care of it. In the meantime, you can use a pop-up blocker to block any ads that may pop up. The adware remover and the pop-up blocker work great together.

Virus software - You need virus software to remove Trojans and worms because viruses will obliterate your machine. You’re going to have expensive repairs on your hands if you don’t remove Trojans and worms when they occur. As for how you get them, you can contract them through email attachments and downloads. Anytime you’re downloading anything, virus software will keep Trojans and worms from making themselves at home.

Staying connected

To stay connected, you have to take certain measures with your machine to keep it “clean.” If you notice that it is running slow, try a registry cleaner. Your computer gathers a lot of junk while surfing the internet, and all of your activities can clog your registry. A registry cleaner will take out those “impurities” that make your computer run poorly. Something such as Safe Registry Scan is a great tool to ensure your registry stays in great shape. Safe Registry Scan will take care of any obsolete information that is slowing you down. This makes Safe Registry a great way to get rid of that unwanted junk on your machine so that you can use your computer with ease.

Using programs such as these will speed up your PC. Getting rid of malicious programs unclogs the system. Know that unclogging the system will speed up your PC and speed up your startup. Slow startups usually mean that there is a problem. Software that is designed to speed up your PC will also take care of that problem.

So if you need to fix PC errors, making sure you have a registry cleaner such as Safe Registry Scan, an adware remover, a spyware remover, virus software to remove Trojans and worms, and a pop-up blocker. It isn’t hard to fix PC errors. It is just a matter of knowing what can help you. Before you know it, you’ll speed up your PC and your computer will be thanking you.

Your passwords are the keys you use to access personal information that you’ve stored on your computer and in your online accounts. Do I need to highlight the importance of creating and managing strong passwords?

If criminals or other malicious users steal this information, they can use your name to open new credit card accounts, apply for a mortgage, or pose as you in online transactions. In many cases you would not notice these attacks until it is too late.

Why are strong passwords needed?

Passwords can be the weakest link in a computer security scheme. Strong passwords are important because password cracking tools continue to improve and the computers used to crack passwords are more powerful. With each passing days, new stronger and more intelligent password breaking tools and being developed, which work on different algorithms to break any password. Passwords that once took weeks to break can now be broken in hours or sometime even in minutes.

Password cracking software use one of three approaches:

Intelligent guessing, Dictionary attacks and automation that tries every possible combination of characters. Given enough time, the automated method can crack any, yes I mean ANY, password.

Passphrase: Creating a strong, memorable password in 5 easy steps

1. Think of a sentence that you can remember. This will be the basis of your strong password or pass phrase. Use a memorable sentence, such as “The second letter of English Alphabet is B”

2. Take the first letter of each word of the sentence that you’ve created to create a new, nonsensical word. Using the example above, you’d get: “tsloeaib.

3. Add complexity by mixing uppercase and lowercase letters. It becomes “TsloEAiB”

4. Add some numbers. I add them after every two letters. You get “Ts2lo4EA6iB8″. See the patterns, but they are hard to guess.

5. Finally, substitute some special characters. You can use symbols that look like letters or punctuation marks. “!Ts2lo4EA6iB8?”

See, it is now 14 characters in length.

Since it can be difficult to remember a ton of passwords, I recommend using Roboform. It will store all of your passwords in an encrypted format and allow you to use just one master password to access all of them. It is a small program, which you have to download from their website and then it works like charm.

It will also automatically fill in forms on Web pages, and you can even get versions that allow you to take your password list with you on your PDA, phone or a USB key.