People like to feel secure in anything that they do. If you drive a car, you want to make sure that it is not going to have any problems while it is on the road. You do not want to stop at a red light and the brakes do not work. The same thing applies when you are riding on an elevator. When you press the button to go to a certain floor, you expect it to stop at that floor and to not keep going. People would like that same feeling when they surf the internet. They want to be sure that when they connect their computer to the network, there will be no one trying to get into their system. They have heard all of the horror stories and have watched a ton of movies that describe the antics of black hat hackers. The average user knows that an attack on their computer can cause them financial problems. These financial problems can last for a long time. So how can you keep intruders off of Windows 7 as you surf the internet? One of the best ways is to download and install a firewall on your computer.

So you might be wondering what a firewall does exactly and how can it keep people off of your computer. Well, there are a couple of ways that we can answer that. A firewall is a program that monitors the incoming and outgoing traffic from the internet. It does this by looking at the ports on your computer. The ports are what allows your computer to have a bridge to the outside world. We could go into a more technical reading of how the ports work, but all you need to know, is that it allows the internet to come to your computer. So a firewall will close off the ports that you are not using. For a program to use a closed port, you have to give it explicit permission to do that. Once you have gave it permission, then that particular program will be able to communicate with the outside world as well. Your browser, and IM clients, are all examples of programs that use a port to connect to the internet. Using a firewall will stop any bad programs from using a port and keep allowing the good programs to continue working.

There are several ways that you can have a firewall monitor your computer as you are working. The first way is to activate the firewall that comes with your wireless router. Most modern day routers will come with a firewall already built into the firmware. You can go into the routers admin menu and set this up. If you do not surf the internet with a router and use a modem only, you can download a software firewall to protect your computer. There are several of them out there. You can read on Google which one’s are highly regarded and make your decision from there. Also be aware that Microsoft Windows 7 comes with a firewall pre-installed. You can activate it and have all of the protection that you will ever need.

As you see, a firewall is a good ideal while you are surfing the internet. Make sure you have one in place so that you can be sure that you are secured.

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