Let’s Take a Step Back – Part Two
- In “Let’s Take a Step Back – Part One I,” I talked about setting up the software on your PC to protect yourself online. Today I am going to talk about physical hardware devices you should buy to protect yourself. OK, if you are like most people in the free world, you get your Internet access via a cable modem or the equivalent from your phone company. Mostly gone are the days of 14.4k dial up. This means that your connection is live all the time, even when you are not using it. If you leave your systems turned on, your computer is constantly under attack from things on the Internet. So what can you do to protect yourself from these attacks and to make your connection life easier?
- Install a cable router / firewall.
- This device physically sits between your cable modem and your computers, and protects your whole network from basic Internet traffic and issues. This device is NOT a replacement for a firewall installed on your computer. You should have both. Spike says, “Defense in depth is the only way to go!”
- Your new firewall should be set to NAT, or Network Address Translation, so the inside of your network is not visible (from an address point of view) from the Internet (usually a default setting).
- It should be set to deny any inbound calls or traffic (usually a default setting).
- Turn on any packet examining capabilities. Not all have this but this will cause your firewall to look into the information sent back to you from a website to determine whether it is dangerous.
- Turn on any and all anti-virus, anti-spyware, malware, email filtering, spam blocking and other protections. The more of these you have, the better.
- Content filtering: If you have kids (or a spouse/friend/roommate who acts like one) then these settings can control the type of websites they can visit. Not all models have this, but if yours does, take a look at these – you might like what you see.Mine, for example block hate, hacking, malware, and dangerous software sites. For the most part it doesn’t bother anyone or keep them from enjoying the Internet. This is normally a paid subscription addition to the device, but consider what $70 a year can do to protect your kids!
There are many other settings individual to your brand of device, so read the manual and make use of them. A firewall on your network does you no good if all the protections are turned off.
The Internet is full of snakes; don’t let them eat you!
Spike