PC security and maintenance

Intrusion detection and prevention

I learned about the benefits and uses of intrusion detection and prevention software.  The tutorial described the differences between your basic virus scan and how it looks for unwanted programs by what they try to do.  They compared it to trying to find a thief by looking at his characteristics rather than his fingerprints.  What this software does is detects changes as they happen making you more secure.  The difficulty with intrusion software is it does take some user knowledge and activity.  Unlike a normal virus scan where you just start the scan and it takes care of the rest, with intrusion software you have to know what you are looking at.  What surprised me about this information was the difference it illustrated between virus scans and intrusion software.  I feel I am now more secure with this new software.

You can download it for free at www.winpatrol.com

Helpful Web Site Resources

This was a short tutorial but very informative.  It gave some great websites that give you resources to help your computer.  PC pit stop is a one stop shop for PC security and maintance.  It has everything from virus scanning to speed optimizing.  And it’s free!  http://www.pcpitstop.com/

The other resource the tutorial gizmos richard’s tech support alert.  It includes windows guides so you can perform common tech support tasks yourself.  If you need to know anything about internet security you can almost always find it there.  www.techsupportalert.com

Firewalls

There are actually two different kinds of firewalls:  hardware firewalls and software firewalls.  Hardware firewalls can be found in things like wireless routers that help protect your computer from the outside world.  Software firewalls are installed on your computer. 

It is important to know what firewalls do.  Software firewalls act as a second line of defense behind your hardware firewall.  They tell you when a program is trying to access the internet, they tell you when something is trying to get out to the internet, they tell you when something is trying to get into your computer and warn you of dangerous internet activity.

It is also important to know what they can't do.  For example hardware firewalls do not:  Block viruses from being installed, block spam email, or block you from spreading viruses to the outside world.

Something that I learned about firewalls were about the two different types and why it is important to have both kinds.  They work together helping to block and protect you from things that the other one may have missed.  They are your best line of defense against unwanted access to your computer