This article is based on an interaction that took place in the Ask a Techo forum on 9 July 2004

Does talk of viruses and firewalls make you nervous?

Is your computer at work safely guarded by an impenetrable moat and fire breathing dragons, but your PC at home protected only by your cat, who likes to sit on the keyboard?

Are you financially challenged and looking for a freebie download that will save you from the dreaded beasties lurking out there?  Read on…

Security falls into two main categories:

• protection from viruses (virii?) and
  
• preventing unauthorised access.

Viruses are mainly spread through email and your first line of defence is to treat any mail from an unknown source with suspicion (especially those with attachments). Try to get in the habit of routinely deleting email without reading it if it comes from somewhere strange or even if it's got an odd-looking subject line. Maybe this gets rid of the odd bit of legitimate email, but hey - if they're serious they'll send it again, right? This simple precaution will probably save you from most infections but not from emails from people you trust who have been compromised themselves.

For peace of mind you're really going to need some anti-virus software of your own. There's a stack of folks out there producing it, the biggest players being McAfee and Norton. You can get evaluation versions off PC magazine disks, or even better, get a copy from your work's IT section (your employer might have a group license which covers home workers like yourself) - in any case, the most important thing about protection from virii is that you update your 'inoculation' regularly. Writing viruses has become a cottage industry for disaffected teenagers so you need to update your virus software's database on a regular basis (at least once a week, preferably daily) and this will mean you'll need to get a registered copy of some software.

Preventing unauthorised access is typically achieved through a firewall. At work you'll have a bit of hardware for this, but at home the easiest way is to install some firewall software. The two big players in this field are BlackIce and ZoneAlarm - again there's a ton of other folks writing firewall applications, a search on Google will flush out a good selection.

One that looks pretty snazzy and seems to have all the goodies - virus protector and firewall - is "EZArmor" from Computer Associates at http://www.my-etrust.com/microsoft.

There’s a great article that covers everything you need on the DMX zone: Protecting Your Windows Computer – Free Resources

James Madison University R.U.N.S.A.F.E. - cheap security measures we can all apply.

ZDnet - reviews of various software utilities, including firewalls and virus scanners.