Protect Your PC From Malware
According to Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) Malware is defined as follows:
“Malware is software designed to infiltrate or damage a computer system without the owner’s informed consent. It is a portmanteau of the words “malicious” and “software”. The expression is a general term used by computer professionals to mean a variety of forms of hostile, intrusive, or annoying software or program code.
Many normal computer users are however still unfamiliar with the term, and most never use it. Instead, “(computer) virus” is used in common parlance and often in the general media to describe all kinds of malware.
Malware includes computer viruses, worms, trojan horses, spyware, dishonest adware, and other malicious and unwanted software.”
So now that we know what malware is how can we prevent infection from these types of programs?
In-order to protect a PC against malware I normally take the following steps:
1) Install reliable Anti-Virus
- If you bought your PC from a PC manufacturer or high street retail chain it probably came with either Norton Anti-Virus or McAfee Anti-Virus pre-installed. It may of even had the full Internet Security Suites. Excellent!
- If you currently have no anti-virus I would recommend Grisoft’s AVG Anti-Virus. There’s a number of reasons for this:
- a) It’s light on resources and doesn’t slow your PC down as much as some
b) Updates are released regularly
c) It’s got very good reviews
d) It’s free for home use
e) It’s free for home use
2) Protect your PC from malware with a firewall
- Without a firewall a PC can become infected with malware in as little as 7 minutes!! This can happen without any interaction from you apart from connecting to the internet!! Yes - you read that right - 7 minutes. Isn’t technology just wonderful!!
- Firewalls are available as either a software firewall (which you install on your PC) or a hardware firewall (which sits between your network and your internet connection).
- Software firewalls are ideal for protecting your PC against internet nasties if you connect to the internet through a USB modem or, if you have a laptop, a wireless hotspot.
- Below are some examples of software firewalls:
- Windows Firewall (available from Windows XP Service Pack 2)
McAfee Personal Firewall (available in McAfee Internet Security Suite)
Norton Personal Firewall (available in Norton Internet Security) and
Grisoft’s AVG Integrated Firewall Protection (available in AVG Internet Security)
- Hardware firewalls are ideal for protecting your network against internet nasties. A hardware firewall can be:
- A seperate unit which sits between the device you use to connect to the internet (modem / router) or
- built in to the device you use to connect to the internet
- Personally I would tend to go for the latter and choose a modem or router which has a built-in firewall (less cables to trip over
) I actually use a Netgear DG834G with it’s built-in SPI firewall. This protects all of the devices attached to my broadband connection whether they are using a hard wired connection or a wireless one. Another advantage of this is that if a person with malicious intent does manage to break through the firewall with a brute force attack the only hardware device I’m going to loose is the relatively cheap router and not one of my PC’s!!
3) Operating System Updates
- Whatever Operating System you are using make sure it is kept up to date with all the latest security patches, fixes and service packs.
- If you’re PC has Microsoft Windows installed you can go to the Windows (or the newer Microsoft Update) website and let it check your PC, download and install any security updates that your machine is missing.
Using the Automatic Updates icon in Control Panel (Windows 2000 / XP) you can automate the retrieval of updates from Microsoft. Personally I always set this to download updates in the background and let me choose when to install them. When the updates have been automatically downloaded I just click on the icon next to my system clock (in Windows XP Service Pack 2 the icon is a yellow shield) and start the install process - job done!
4) Use updated anti adware / spyware technology
- Despite your best efforts & following the three steps above, it is still possible for some forms of Malware to get into and infect your machine. So the fourth (and most overlooked) step to protecting your PC against Malware is to install Anti-Adware and / or Anti-Spyware software.
- There are many programs available which will scan your PC for Adware, Spyware or both. Some of these include real time protection, some of them do not and you will need to run them to detect any malware infections.
- Personally I use the following FREE utilities for home users who have no Adware / Spyware protection installed on their PC’s:
a) Lavasoft’s Adaware - available from http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
b) Safer Networkings Spybot Search & Destroy - available from http://www.safer-networking.org/
- As FREE utilities neither of the above include real time scanning, but if you register and purchase Lavasoft’s Adaware the real time scanning function (and more) is enabled. This will watch for and remove any infections found when they first enter your PC.
- A Word Of Caution! There are products available which have similar names to the two I have listed above however, they are not usually free and not always as effective at removing Adware / Spyware! Some of them even contain Adware / Spyware elements in them!
And finally … it should be noted that no Anti-Malware program is 100% effective 100% of the time. Despite your best efforts there are people out there who will and do write malware programs designed to circumnavigate any attempts to keep their programs off of you PC. Adware / Spyware is continually evolving … as are the programs that we use to counter act them!!
Please note: It is important to keep your anti-malware programs up to date and check your PC regularly.
adware, malware, spyware, trojan, virus
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