Tips of ensuring your home laptop is secure

There are too many security loopholes nowadays. I remembered before I bought my new personal anti-virus software, there was one incident during my access to my company’s network via VPN, many spy ware and Trojans were detected during the scan. I am surprised about that because I thought I have updated my previous anti-virus signature almost once every 2 days. Imagine that it is only 2 days, and you will be rewarded with so many surprises!!

I re-looked into the matter and planned to have a better personal information security plan before I click on the IE browser and enter into the world of worms. Having said that, I know it would be a bit tough for someone who may not have expertise of IS to do that, so I have come out with a list of tips to help you to better reduce the risk of getting hurt by the Internet without knowing it. Basically there are few things to look at when considering protecting your laptop when surfing the Internet.

1. Check your routers that only your own PC/laptops are permitted to connect to it. Make sure there are no other computers in the permitted list. Use Mac Filtering is more secure than password protection. Password is crack-able depending on the strength of the password and algorithm used. There are many tools available to crack your password within a short period of time. Mac filtering is different, the routers only accepts connection from the allowed MAC addresses you key in. You may think that you can always create a fake MAC address, but wait!, bear in mind that MAC address is unique and if you are using it and someone is also using the same MAC address, that is conflict! You can easily track down and report who else is using that fake MAC address because their laptop will not have the corresponding MAC address in reality. To be more secure, switch off the router when you are not using it!

2. Stop using pirated Anti-virus software. You will never know when they will stop the anti-virus signature updates and you will never know if you are really receiving the latest update. Avoid open source or free anti-virus available in the Internet. You may think that you have the best in the world because it is free. But remember that there is no free lunch in this world, when something is free, no 100% commitment to the R&D of getting the latest anti-virus signature out and no quality assurance built into the product. Bugs are common in these freeware. Even the free anti-virus software is from the major vendor, what is the intention of producing that free tool without any string attached to it. Don't be too naive by the marketing gimmick provided by the Vendor. Give them a call to support your free anti-virus software and measure their turn around time!

3. Turn on the scheduled scan into your hard disk after you have your anti-virus software. Make it everyday because Mal-ware or Trojans are working faster than you expect.

4. Do not trust any USB thumb drive from your friends or relative. This is not because you don't trust them; it is because you don't trust who has passed the files to your friends or relative. Get them scanned with your anti-virus scanner before use it.

Please do let me know if you are interested in advance tips for advanced users.