Fortify your PC

Protection and Prevention

Tired of slowdowns and those chilling PC Freezes just when your favorite chat friend is online or when you have to send your critical report to boss?? Tired of blaming murphy's laws (everything that can go wrong will go wrong at the wrong time)?? To help you tilt the odds towards your side and prevent unfortunate uncertainities, here are certain beginners tips which may prove helpful

There are three armors that need to be clad on your PC to keep it in the pink of its heath

A) Antivirus - (AVG or Avast) with regular updates
b) Spyware detection and protection: (Spybot - Search and destroy) with regular updates
c) Firewall - (zone alarm)


A) Antivirus.. The bare essential:

Avast as well as AVG have free home editions with unlimited updates. After installing any of these, its important that we keep the software updated with the latest virus definitions that are posted by these companies. You will find many PCs with Norton which still get infected, the reason : the live update is not run to keep the updates up-to date.

The updates can be done through the program itself. While AVG has an option of scheduling, Avast home edition has an option of downloading the updates as and when they are available that too automatically without the user having to bother to do it. The beauty of Avast is that the packets of updates are smaller in size and are sent almost on a daily basis to ensure that your PC is ahead and protected from the numerous viruses that are written daily. The updates happen whenever the user connects to the net and an Audio visual prompt is displayed when the update completes. Avast also has the capacity of blocking attempted hacking, however we will need a firewall to ensure total protection from this.

Avast user interface however takes sometime to get friendly. It asks for a serial number when you run it for the first time by rightclicking on the tray icon. The serial number can be obtained free of cost by filling a form on their website and by giving your valid mail address.

Important STEPs for Avast Antivirus :

0) Download the setup of Home edition from Avast.com

1) Disconnect the LAN Cable (for lan and Lan internet users)

2) Uninstall the older Antivirus from Add Remove programs in Windows control panel

3) Install the Avast AV program using the downloaded setup file

4) Fetch the serial number of the program by filling a form on Avast.com

5) right click on the tray icon or start the program from Start button>> program files

6) Enter the serial number and set the Resident Protection option to "high"

Everytime you logon after this, you will see a small spherical icon in the system tray and a message telling you that the database has been updated.

b) Spyware prevention and removal:

S

pywares are slightly different from viruses in the way they work. Spywares are one of the main reasons for slow down of your net speed. Spwares are implanted by various websites and miscreants for various reasons, the main motive being, sending your usage information which could include your passwords to a particular source.

Few spyware enable a miscreant to take control of your PC resources, thats when you see your PC getting slow with connection speed dropping drastically. While antivirus softwares do stop few Spywares, there are few elusive ones that escape its dragnet.

Spybot search and destroy not only helps to scan and remove the spyware already on the PC, but also innoculates the PC against further breaches. The software also doesnt conflict with the antivirus software which runs on the PC.

The software can be downloaded from http://security.kolla.de . Install the software and update it with the net connection on. The first update may take longer upto 15 minutes. Thereafter you may check for updates every fortnight.

Run the program regularly and remove the spyware which are shown.

c) Firewall (Zone Alarm) : Prevention is better than cure

Zone alarm is undisputable when it comes to prevention against unauthorized intrusions. The best part is that this fabulour program comes to you free of cost with the advanced features available for a period of 15 days before which, most of the times the company launches a new product upgrade.

Zone alarm prevents the intrusion of viral programs and hackers from outside who may exploit a vulnerability in your pc and try to access your valuable data and resources. Zone Alarm also stops programs in your PC to access the net without your permission. Eg. Adobe Acrobat and real player have a software which tries to access the net and consume bandwidth.

In the beginning the program needs to "learn" about the legitimate programs in your PC. eg. It will ask "MSNMSGR wants to access internet do you wisht to allow?" when you try to run MSN Messenger. There is an option in this prompt which says "Remember option" . Next time MSN messenger tries to access it will allow directly.

If at any given time it creates a problem which cant be ascertained by you, go to the icon which appears in the Tray, right click and select quit.

Antivirus with regular updates, Spyware prevention along with Zone alarm will ensure that your PC survives even the worst epidemic!

Happy protection!

Nagesh