Nowadays, personal computers and the internet are an essential part of our lives. People do many things online such as chat, do their shopping, or their banking. However the more things we do online, , the more open we are to potential security threats . The threat could be a hacker using your PC as a ‘zombie’; a platform from which to launch attacks on other personal computersor they may want to access your private data, a practice commonly called ‘phishing’. All of us who use a PC to do anything online should know of the dangers, and here we will list some techniques to help you protect yourself.

1) Back up your important information and store it away from the computer. Modern computers are equipped with DVD-R drives and this simplifies the task of storing your data to a blank disc to be filed. Alternatively, consider an external hard drive.

2) Update and patch your operating system, browser, and software frequently. Windows now includes an automated update where the latest patches are downloaded to your machine for you to apply on the next restart. Alternatively you can access it from the Control Panel (Start-Control Panel-Windows Update). For older versions of Windows (e.g. XP) you can check online for patches at windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Keep in mind that older versions of Windows may no longer be supported by Microsoft, so for most effective security protection keep your operating system as up-to-date as you can. In the same way keep your browser updated; most browsers have an option to check for updates from the Help menu.

3) Install a firewall. A good firewall will block viruses and trojans from getting onto your machine, and anything you are unaware of that is trying to access the internet without your knowledge will be stopped. Windows Firewall is included with Vista and Windows 7 (and is by default turned on), but you may wish to consider a third- party product such as the well-regarded ZoneAlarm (www.zonealarm.com).

4) Check your browser security settings. If you’re using Internet Explorer go to Tools then Internet Options, then choose the Security tab. By default, the level is set to ‘medium-high’. Set this to ‘high’ to block Active-X and Javascript, which can be used by hackers to plant more trojans on your machine. You are able to maintain a list of ‘trusted sites’ (click the green tick for this zone) and add the addresses of those sites you do trust and they will not be blocked the same way as untrusted websites. Firefox security settings are accessed by clicking Tools then Options, then selecting the Security tab.

5) Make sure you have antivirus software. Highly important! Most personal computers come with a version of McAfee or Norton which is valid for 30 days, but to keep receiving updates you have to subscribe to them. If you do not have these or wish to use a free antivirus solution, AVG or Avast both offer free versions; when you install either of these it is vital that these are set to automatically update so that the latest antivirus patches are downloaded regularly.

6) Beware of email attachments. A typical way of passing a virus around is via an email attachment, it is possible to scan these using your anti-virus software but in general, if you do not recognise the sender, do not trust the attachment. In addition, you may get a mail from an address that appears genuine, but is actually a hacker impersonating a genuine company (this is a typical ‘phishing’ method).

7) Don’t run programs from unknown sources. Again, your anti-virus software should be able to scan and detect viruses hidden in downloaded files, but use good sense. In addition, beware of forwarding on a program, the source of which is unknown to you, it could have a funny joke in it but if a friend or co-worker gets a virus from it, you could land yourself in trouble.

8 ) Set your machine to show filename extensions. By default, Windows hides file extensions ‘for known file types’. This should be disabled, you do this by going to Tools, then Folder Options, and selecting the View tab in Explorer. In Vista or later, the menu bar is hidden – to reveal it, press the ALT key once and it will show in Explorer, then proceed as described.

9) If you’re not using the computer, turn it off! Nothing can get to your computer while it’s switched off, so when you’re not using it, shut it down.

10) Make a bootable CD or pen drive so that if your machine ever does get damaged, you can still start it up. Modern computers no longer use floppy drives which often were used so that you could boot from a floppy if the worst happened, so you would need to use your CD drive or USB pen drive instead. A good way to get to your computer is to have a bootable operating system on a CD or DVD, such as Ubuntu. It will run live from the disk, so if you cannot start your machine normally, you can still reach the files and if necessary retrieve them. Ubuntu is a free operating system based on Linux, and you can get it at http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

These are some of the basic steps we should all take so that if things do go wrong, we can recover.

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