Condoms for Your PC

Well, maybe you won't really put a condom on your PC, but what you do need is good protection. Today, that means a firewall, an anti-virus product, and an anti-spyware product. You need to have them in place and you need to keep them up-to-date. For anti-virus and anti-spyware products, keeping them both up-to-date is nearly as important as frequent scanning with them. Since we don't know what new viruses and spyware are lurking until they are created, the companies with anti-virus and anti-spyware products are always behind those who create malware. Only when a new malware item appears, can we get updates to prevent it from getting on our PCs or to remove it once it is there.

What else can we do to have a safe PC? There is a lot we can do. Let's examine some categories:

ACCOUNTS - Use an account that does NOT have administrative privileges. That way, if someone breaks into your PC, there is some damage control. Also, avoid the use of the account names which are created by default. Those are "administrator" and "guest." Consider one account with administrative privileges for when you need to have those privileges, but use another account that doesnot have administrative privileges for your normal work.

PASSWORDS - Use passwords that give you protection. Try to make them 6-8 characters in length with a combination of letters (upper and lower case) and numbers. Avoid names of family, friends, and pets. Consider a trick like the first letter of each word of a sentence. It will NOT spell a word. For example, the first letter of each word of this sentence, "Read this first article on save PC," would result in the password of "RtfaosP." It is not a word, it is a reasonable length, difficult to guess, but easy to remember.

DISK CLEANUP - While not a virus or spyware prevention tool, this MS Windows utility can reclaim available disk space from the recycle bin, temporary files, and deleted files. With regular use, this utility can keep more disk space available.

DISK DEFRAGMENTATION - This MS Windows utility can reorganize disk space to put related files together for faster access. As files are written to disk space, they may not fit one-after-the-other. When that happens, the files are "fragmented." The defragmentation process moves files in an effort to put related files next to each other. That means that more data that you want for a particular file can be read at once - translating into better performance. The first time that this utility is run, the disk space probably will be badly fragmented and the process will take a long time. When the disk space is kept in better order, the process will take little time.

MICROSOFT CRITICAL PATCHES -To keep up-to-date with the "critical patches" for an operating system from Microsoft is not so simple as it would seem. Microsoft offers two choices: 1) use an automated update that will send the critical patches" when they are released, or 2) do a The larger issue, however, is that you give up control of what patches will be installed. Whatever is released for your system will be installed. That may create problems because some "critical patches" may cause parts of your system to not work correctly. It becomes a difficult decision: keep PCs up-to-date with all available "critical patches" and risk a situation where PCs may fail to function, or do NOT install "critical patches" immediately and risk a situation where worms/viruses infect not only some PCs but have the potential for spreading the problems. If you choose to do a manual update, how can you be assured that all PCs are updated on a timely basis? The choice seems to be in favor of the automated update from Microsoft.