How secure is your computer? Most of us have virus protection
and probably feel pretty safe. But how many know that there can
be many individuals out there who may be trying to snoop (or
actually snooping) around your hard disk all day long? I would
venture that there are not many sitting at their computer right
now who have even thought about it!
High speed access to the Internet, i.e. DSL, cable and a couple
of others have opened the doors to our work areas. I had even
recorded attacks on my computer when I was using a local dial up
service. The high speed access capability is great, I know that
from personal experience. But it does open you up to extra risks
since your Internet connection is probably open all day, even
when you are not using it.
Intrusions on the Internet are common because hackers do
frequent scans looking for systems they can break into. A
typical hacker may scan thousands. He or she isn't targeting you
personally. In the hour preceding the writing of this article I
had three attacks on my computer through my cable hookup. Two
were hackers probing to see if they could get in and the other
was a hacker checking to see if I had a specific Trojan program
that might have compromised my system so that they could get in.
This is a regular daily occurrence. Luckily my system has a
software (firewall) program that detects and stops any attacks.
It also logs in the attacks so that I can see what they were.
The program is called Black Ice Defender,
http://www.networkice.com and cost me about $40. It was well
worth the price. There are a number of programs out there and
one that seems to be generally recommended along with Black Ice
Defender is ZoneAlarm http://www.zonelabs.com which happens to
be free (free for personal and non-profit use).
A while back I had read several articles in PC Magazine about
these risks and that was what made me get a copy of Black Ice.
By the way it is easy to install and use. I don't know about
ZoneAlarm but from my readings it appears it is also fairly
simple. One of the ezines I subscribe to recently had a short
article about a site called "Shields UP!" where you could go to
check your computer security for free. If you are interested go
to: https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
These tests are for Windows systems. There will be two buttons,
"Test My Shields" and Probe My Ports". These tests take a couple
of minutes each and they will give you a full report. When I was
finished, I felt pretty good for the moment since they couldn't
get into my machine. In fact they evaluated it as "appearing
that my computer didn't even exist".
You can sit there and say that you are only a little guy or gal,
who would even try? Well that may be so, but on the other hand,
do you know exactly what you have saved on your computer -
credit card numbers, account numbers, personal information...?
You would be amazed at the number of files that are saved on
your machine by windows and other programs that you aren't even
aware of.
I have had to change credit card accounts twice in the last year
due to some large well known companies who's systems were
attacked and credit card files were compromised. So it can
happen, even to the big guys. The software is out there to help
you, it can be free or relatively inexpensive. Why not feel a
little more secure?
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