I was talking with Pat via IM, and he offered his recipe for being secure with your online computing:
- Use a NAT router - never expose your computer directly to the internet
- Run firewall software - something outgoing and incoming is nice, but the regular windows firewall is probably OK. Defense in depth! A laptop on wireless can bring threats into your network.
- Turn on automatic updates and be sure to install them
- Don't click stuff you don't recognize and trust
- Run AV software
If people did those things, there probably wouldn’t be problems.
He also says that 2 and 5 are optional, but very helpful. If you just follow a policy of keeping your computer safe all the time, it’ll make it so that the software/hardware doesn’t have to work as hard to protect you.
MS only really have 3 steps. I think that the NAT router is more important than firewall software, personally, but it's good to protect the machine specifically, too. Both is best.
Good enough for me. Secure yourself!
