The Importance of Personal Desktop Security

I am sure that everyone has come across this topic at least once or twice but I suppose I’d like to add a few words of advise based from experience. Taking your personal desktop’s security in terms of malicious scripts or worms, viruses, keyloggers and other trojan apps should be taken seriously. With everyone connected to the net almost all the time and having to transact online is reason enough to be at least aware of the dangers it poses.

This is much more likely to happen if you use public internet cafes. You have your usual email accounts, forum and site subscriptions, credit card transactions, online banking and other payment gateways. I have used and maintained a lot of these that I barely able to manage all accounts from memory — a Paypal account, Xoom, AdSense, WorldPay, 2Checkout, BPIExpressOnline, MetrobankDirect, and a bunch of other lesser important sites.

Thus one should be careful and be pro-active and securing your own PC. Here are some things I do on my end:

Windows Update

AntiVirus – I use Avast Home Edition which has Email, Network, P2P and Web shield aside from the standard virus protection it has. AVG of Grisoft is also a good free alternative.

Anti-Spyware – I have Spybot Search & Destroy on my desktop. Ad-Aware is also a good alternative.

Firewall – if you are running Windows XP SP2, just enable dit or if your are more paranoid, you can install ZoneAlarm.

Remember, you won’t realize how bad it is until you get hit.