More on Laptop Wifi Security

If you missed the 1^st part you can catch it here

NTFS not FAT32
NTFS and FAT32 are two types of disk format, the difference is NTFS offers very good levels of security as opposed to FAT32 that offers none, with FAT32 anyone logging onto your computer will be able to see everything, but using NTFS means even if someone does manage to hack your system, unless they have full administrator rights they should still not be able to see your documents.

To find out which file system you have go to My Computer – Right click on your C drive – Select Properties – now under File system you will see if you have FAT32 or NTFS.

If your system is currently FAT32 this can be converted to NTFS using our article here..



Password Protect Sensitive Files
As an extra precaution apart from using the NTFS security consider password protecting any sensitive files, Excel and Word documents can be password protected by using Save As and selecting options, or by using some third party encryption software that allows you to protect complete directories making it virtually impossible for anyone to access your files once the encryption is in place.

Do Not Allow Secure Website Information to be Stored Locally
Does your computer store your banking web pages? Unless you have changed the option to not store secure pages locally it probably does, this can be checked using Internet Explorer – Tools menu – Internet Options – Advanced – Scroll down to the security section and make sure Do not save encrypted pages to disk is check

Updates
Make it a habit of regularly checking for updates on your laptop, this includes Antivirus, Antispyware and Windows updates, letting the updates on any of these lapse will lower security.

In addition to this its always worth running scheduled Virus and Spyware scans, most products allow you to schedule this, and although it can be a little tough to find the time if you travel a lot, a weekly scan only takes a few minutes to start, then it can simply be left to run.

Be Aware of Your Surroundings
A really basic example of laptop wifi security involves the guy who was travelling to work on a crowded train who was so engrossed in using his laptop to do his internet banking he never noticed someone looking over his shoulder who was able to make a note of his Bank, Username and Password. If you need to conduct any private business in public areas then its worth investing in a privacy screen, this only allows the person sitting directly in front of the Laptop to see what is actually on the screen, even when using a privacy screen we should always be vigilant in these situations.

Has Your Computers Security Been Compromised
If you have reason to believe your laptop wifi security has been compromised the first action should be dependant on the implications, or worse case scenario such as contacting any private/secure website providers such as banks you have visited online so they can take relevant action such as locking accounts or changing passwords.

Next you need to ascertain how the security was breached on your computer, the most common way is via an email attachment, but if you check the logs of your firewall you’ll be able to which users were logged on and which applications were communicating with the web.

This should point you in the right direction, but it is still better to check all aspects of your computers security such as running a spyware scan, anti virus scan, checking to make sure no extra user accounts have suddenly appeared, changed account passwords.

Common Sense
If you have everything in place in terms of your laptop wifi security , it will be very very rare to ever get your computer hacked, and even without all the security in place its still rare.

In most cases computers usually get hacked or infected with some form of malware when we get careless, this includes opening email attachments we are not sure about, even if they have come from a friend or out the blue check before opening it, as many computer viruses have the ability to email themselves to recipients in email address books.

The other main cause is sites such as peer to peer or torrents, where many of the files do have viruses or spyware attached, if you do use these type of sites I would seriously think about having a separate computer for this.

If you missed our first part on Laptop Wifi Security you can read it here ..

computer adviser laptop wifi security article