Computer Security and Availability
As people become more comfortable using computers, it seems that
people's lives are being stored virtually on hard drives. Yet many
people still do not take rudimentary actions to protect and back up
their data. Having a backup for an emergency or securing your computer
from intruders does not have to difficult or time consuming.
Think about all the music, text files, pictures, financial records,
videos and other files that you have created or collected that is
stored on your hard drive. What if that hard drive failed? Would you be
able to recover those files? Would you want to? There is simply no
reason not to have an external hard drive to back up your sensitive to.
An external hard drive can make daily, weekly or monthly backups. You
can set it to make backups on only those new files added to your
computer or full backups every time. The software that controls the
backup process is typically easy to use and very flexible. Do not be
one of those people who suffers a hard drive crash only to realize that
they did not have adequate copies of their files stored externally.
Plan for the worst.
The protection of your data from unwanted intruders are accomplished
with firewalls, virus protection and routers. Windows XP systems all
have a built in firewall that should be turned on before the computer
is connected to the internet. It is simply an On/Off button reached
through the Network Properties Advanced tab. This built-in feature is
not the most robust firewall available, but it is certainly better than
not having one at all.
Virus protection is to be used to strengthen your computers defense
against viruses, worms, adware and spyware. Viruses and worms can come
from email and web sites. Adware and spyware typically come from web
sites. Most viruses and worms can be thwarted simply by not opening
email attachments or downloading a file that you are not 100% sure is
legitimate. Spyware and adware can be a little more tricky to rid your
computer of simply because so many websites are now using tracking
software to get information on their website visitors. The more
malicious of these programs can cause system degradation and even
crashes. Always running virus protection and using software to
periodically rid yourself of spyware and adware will help in the
defense of your computer.
A more advance technique to protecting your computer is to use a router
to reach the Internet. The Internet connection from your provider will
be "routed" through the router. All your computers will then be
connected to the router via wireless or wired connections. From an
unwanted outsiders view they will only see the one public Internet
address of the router, which in effect masks the addresses of the
computers attached to it makes them virtually invisible.
You have spent a lot of time creating and collecting the files that are
stored on your computer. It would be a shame to lose them simply
because you did not take the necessary precautions to back up and
protect all your data.