In part 2 of how to stay safe online I will be talking about firewalls, email and the types of security features that your web browser can offer. Let’s get started with firewalls.

Firewalls

In the days of dial-up Internet, software firewalls were important to protect your computer against hackers who pretty much had complete access to any open ports on your computer. Nowadays, since most people use NAT (Network Address Translation) routers, this is less of a problem. Since your router now controls your public IP address, it is responsible for allowing or dropping incoming packets when they arrive. This means, that unless you have specified a port translation or port forward, then an incoming connection attempt will be denied. There are exceptions to this rule. To make life easier for people, a lot of router manufactures now support UPNP (Universal Plug N Play), this is essentially a dynamic port forwarding service that opens up ports on your router when certain devices or software require it to do so. There are clearly security risks associated with this and you are advised to disable UPNP as a lot of routers come shipped with it enabled by default.

By no means do most home routers offer full firewall capabilities however and your computer is still capable of making outgoing connections at will, whether these are legitimate ones or malicious ones by viruses and malware. This is where software firewalls serve their purpose. Normally they only allow certain programs and services to establish outbound connections. If a new program or file wants to make an outgoing connection it must get permission first. This means if you were to get infected with a root-kit or virus that wanted to ‘call-home’ to its server (potentially to download further malware), it would not be able to unless you allowed it.

This extra line of defence can be very effective and a lightweight software firewall is recommended. A lot of ‘all-in-one’ security packages come with a built in firewall or network shield. Failing that, there are many other vendors who offer software firewalls, some free, some paid for, these include; zonealarm, comodo and outpost firewall.

Email

Email is the backbone of Internet communications, although social networking is slowly taking over, email is still our main method of contacting others over the Internet. Spam is a widespread and global problem that will affect the vast majority of people who have email accounts. Luckily, many providers now have sophisticated spam filters that block a large percentage of spam emails; some however will still slip through.

The big problem is when email accounts get compromised by hackers and then spam emails are sent out to their contacts list. Since these appear to have come from a legitimate sender, they usually end up in your inbox and not your spam folder. Some of these spam emails are advertisements for various products. Whilst this is an annoyance, they are usually harmless enough. Some on the other hand are malicious websites that have drive-by exploits setup to try to install a virus onto your computer when your visit the site.

Your common sense is your best weapon against spam emails. You will normally be able to recognise a spam email even if it has come from one of your contacts. NEVER click on any suspicious looking links, not even out of curiosity! The same goes for attachments, a lot of providers will scan the attachments first but this is never 100% effective so if an attachment seems suspicious you should leave it well alone.

Web Browser Security

There is a lot of debate over which web browser can offer you the most security, some people say Firefox, some say Chrome, some even say Internet Explorer. All vendors now put great emphasis on their security features and most now come with built in phishing filters. These are always worth keeping enabled and won’t be much of an annoyance. Third party add-ons can offer even more security such as the ‘noscript’ plugin for Firefox. This plugin essentially disallows many common scripts from running when you visit a website. Whilst this does offer much more secure browsing, it can also affect the browsing experience and you will notice some sites won’t function correctly.

Whichever web browser you use, you should always make sure you’re using the latest version since regular updates will be released to fix security vulnerabilities. Be sure to keep an eye out on the vendor’s websites for any important releases or updates that might affect you.

To finish things off, this youtube video has some good tips on staying virus free, enjoy!