Firewalls and antivirus, the key to a secure computer set up

If you are a person that worries about the set up of their computer, then one of the first things that you do is to make sure that everything is secure. As we all know, in the age of the internet, security is the most important things that we can think about when it comes to our computer. Earlier in the lives of home computers, there was no internet as we know it now. The main thing that we had to worry about was someone physically accessing our system. Now that is not the case. We have to make sure that we have the right software tools that will allow us to keep our computer safe when we travel down that road known as the World Wide Web. There are two key pieces of software that will help you do this. These software tools are known as a firewall and antivirus. If you are a computer beginner, you may have heard of these solutions but you might not quite know what they are. In this article we will walk you through what they do, and how you can use them to keep your computer safe.

When we talk about firewalls, we are talking about a program that guards the entrances of your computer. These entrances are known as ports and they allow you to have a connection with the outside world. Every day, the bad guys are looking for new ways to be able to get into your computer by using these ports. To prevent that from happening, you use this software to hold them off at the pass. If you set the software up right, then the bad guys will have a very hard time getting into your system. The only drawback to this type of software is that you are going to have to open up some of the ports of your computer. You have certain programs that need to be able to access the internet so you need to allow them a way through. This is known as port forwarding. Other than allowing port forwarding, all of the rest of your ports should be safe from intruders.

The most important piece of software that you should have on your computer is the one that we are about to talk about next. It is known as the antivirus and it is what keeps your computer safe from being infected. If you have watched the news at all, you will no doubt have heard about black hat hackers trying to infect your computer. They do this by putting little rogue programs on your computer known as viruses. These viruses can cause your computer to do a number of things that you do not want it to do. So to prevent that from happening, you can run a program called an antivirus that will detect them as soon as they are on your computer. This way you can stop them in their tracks before they do any harm. Antivirus is key to having a well secured computer system.

As you see, having your computer well secured is very important. If you have two of the software programs that we just discussed then you are on the right path.