Windows Security  - How Secure is Your Computer?

Windows Security
a) Is your pc secure?
b) How much security does your pc have?
c) Not sure?
d) How can you make your pc more Secure?

When you break down an operating system and you look at how many possible window security risks there are it can be quite frightening, there are about six different types.
for example we have

See more of our Windows Security articles below

1. Operating System (security issues)
2. File System Type
3. User Security
4. Spyware
5. Virus's
6. Open Ports

Over the past four years it has sadly become more and more crucial to keep on top of your window security ,

if it's not other people trying to get onto your pc or rather hack onto your pc it's virus's , windows security damaging work files, emailing people or trashing your operating system, if it's not virus's " what is a computer virus " it's windows spyware which is the latest curse to affect your pc, be sure to look at our section.

Everything put together here will give your pc high security.

1. The operating system, regardless of whether you use Windows XP, 2000 NT or Macintosh OSX,
you have to make sure your pc has the latest critical updates installed; they are called critical updates for one reason.
They enhance the windows security of your pc greatly
If your pc has not got auto update installed,
To manually update your pc with the latest system updates you just need to go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ or if you use internet explorer go to the tools menu and select windows update.

If you would like to auto enable windows security updates , this is the best Some of the updates are pretty big.
If you have a slow connection it may take a while, but today it's just not worth the risk of not updating.

As soon as a security flaw is found in an operating system it now only takes someone around 14 days to exploit this, and the gap between the flaw notice and exploitation is getting smaller.

2. File system type, there are really only two file system types we are concerned with here, the chances are you are either using FAT32 or NTFS,
In a nutshell unless you really have a reason not to you should be using NTFS it's far more secure than FAT32, it also has more advantages that can be found here.
You can only use NTFS on windows XP, 2000, NT4 operating systems, to learn how to convert your system to NTFS or for more info on file systems checkout find out more here ..

3. User or windows Security, this is a grey area for a lot of people,
You login to your pc, but do you have to type a password ? Is the guest account enabled ?, basically if the guest account is enabled, anyone can connect to your pc, so here's what we need to do.

Windows XP, go to the start menu, control panels, administrative tools, computer management, you will see a tab called Local users and Groups, expand this tab by clicking on it's + Select users, you will now see all the machine's user account, from here,

If you need to give yourself a password, right click on the name of the user, that you use to login, if you don't login as any user, right click on the account labelled Administrator, select the Set Password field, and put in a password and type it again to confirm,

Please make sure you use a password that is easy for you to remember, or now with your enhanced window security you will lock yourself out of your own pc.

Ok now that you've given yourself a password, from the users tab look for the Guest account, we need to disable this,
If it's already disabled you will see it has a red circle with a white X inside it, if not though,
Right click on this and select properties, click to put a tick in the field Account Is Disabled,

you've now secured your pc user accounts.

4. Windows AntiSpyware , Spyware is the newest and in a lot of respects it can be the biggest windows security risk on your pc,
For more info on spyware click here. for more info on spyware click here. There are thankfully a lot of Windows Antispyware products on the market, also some of the best ones are free,

The two that I use and install on clients computers are Google Anti Spyware or Spybot Search and Destroy,
Both are very thorough and you'd be surprised how much spyware your pc picks up when your on-line.

5. Virus's , our old friend the computer virus, seems like they have been around forever these days( what is a computer virus )
There are absolutely loads of Antivirus Products on the market, in my experience there does not seem to be a great deal of difference between most of the major ones, I have used AVG, PC Cillin (now called Trend) Norton, Mcafee, Panda, Sophos,

I would recommend you find one that you are happy with, have a look on the sites and see which ones you can download on a trial basis,

some people recommend one and others recommend another, but all of these are all good anti virus products.

6. Open Ports, This is yet another way for people to get onto your pc
This is where a good firewall comes in, a firewall creates a barrier between your pc and the internet, it monitors traffic coming into and from your pc,
It will block any suspicious activity and allow all other.
There are a lot of firewall products on the market of course, XP even has a windows security firewall built in, it's ok,
But it is still not as good as most of the ones commercially available, but in effect they usually offer the same amount of protection.
Of all the ones I've used, Windows, Norton, Panda, Sygate, Mcafee, Outpost,

All of them are very good, but for ease of use I've stuck with Mcafee, it's easy to install and configure, and if you need to use internet connection sharing it's a blessing that it sorts out everything for you,

you can download demos of most of the firewall packages above, so I'd recommend you try for yourself, otherwise Mcafee.

As you can see Window security is quite a large subject,

I've tried to make it as easy as possible, so hopefully you'll now have an idea of how to protect your pc properly, using all of the windows security info listed above.

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