The average American has a home computer, but do they know how to secure it and keep it secure? There are 3 basic rules for security that everyone should know.
While living in a growing age of technology, having at least one computer in the home is just as common as having a refrigerator. Most homes in the United States will have some sort of computer equipment for either personal use or business use. The problem is that the regular American that uses their home computer for general purposes has no idea how to secure it and keep it secured.
Generally speaking, anyone can go to a local retail chain and tell the sales associate what they want out of a computer. The store will then sell them everything and even set it up for them. The problem is that they can be sold a computer system and a router or wireless router but not have any idea on what the router is actually for. All they know is that the people at the store said they needed it and since everything was set up for them they feel their computer is completely secure. Little do they know that the sensitive information they could be storing on their computer could still be wide open to intruders. But how can we fix this problem? Actually the answer to that is very simple; verbal education and a “cheat sheet” of rules.
For basic home computer security there are three simple rules to follow. First rule is whether the router was setup by the store or not, they will need to know that there is a password for the router and to keep it in a safe place. If the router is wireless then they will definitely need a strong password, preferably WPA2 encrypted. Also they need to know where to go to change the password every so often in order to keep their system even more secure. Why would they need a password at all? Well if they’re using a wireless router then any Tom, Dick, or Harry could sit near their home and jump on the connection to do whatever on the internet. The bad thing with this is that if the law is broken, law enforcement officials would see that it was from the homeowner’s internet connection so it had to be them that did it.
A second rule that should be covered is to make sure that anti-virus and firewall software is installed on the computer. This way if someone breaks through the router, they will also have to break through the computer’s firewall in order to get to any sensitive information. Most non-tech geeks don’t know that Microsoft’s basic firewall with Windows is virtually useless. A separately installed firewall program will give a lot more protection. However, just as with the router, they will need a good strong password that needs to be kept in a good place and changed intermittently.
The third basic rule would be to be made aware that the router’s firmware as well as the anti-virus and firewall software will need updated or even patched from time to time. The firewall and anti-virus will need updated a lot more regularly, at least once a week, than the firmware version for the router. This is where a lot of people get in trouble. They think that since they have the software and router in place that they are secure, but they either forget or are not told that they need to keep it all updated too.
With these basic rules and added knowledge about regular computer security we can keep intruders at bay, keep our sensitive information secure, and stop others from using our internet connection for malicious activities.
