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What beyond Antivirus Software to Protect Your PC?
An antivirus program isn’t the only protective measure that a user should take to combat against the dangerous online threats. Viruses, malware, worms, Trojans, and other potential threats can be undoubtedly recognized by an efficient antivirus, but what else a user can do to protect their devices, if antivirus isn’t available? Well, this is a common question that makes every user worried about their PC and data security, during inactiveness of an antivirus. A little carefulness, visiting trusted sources, adding physical security features, and enabling the firewall of the device can help you to keep your devices away from hacker’s access.
In this blog post, you will read about those five tips that can help you protect your PC beyond an antivirus support:
Choose a good web browser
An online attack is always triggered through a weak web browser that has vulnerabilities or security loopholes. Most of the malicious content will enter your device through web browser and may attack the sensitive and highly informational sections to cause data as well as financial loss. Choose a good and efficient web browser to ensure that your data, geo location, browsing history, and other prominent factors are always encrypted to offer you’re the best class security against such threats. Several experts say that so far, Google Chrome is one of the most secured web browsers and its Sandbox feature never compromises the system security.
Set up strong passwords for online accounts and router
Feel secured by putting a lock for physical security
Kensington lock is one of the most crucial security measures that a user should take to avoid the chances of theft or unauthorized access on their devices. A user should set up a BIOS password to ensure that no physical device or peripheral gets connected to the PC without seeking prior permission from the admin. This lock acts as a gateway to ensure restricted access to your device and stops removable devices such as USB, CD drive etc to freely connect to the PC. In addition to this, it is recommended not to use any external hard drive or USB device for storing important data, as they are easier to steal/lose.
Make use of technology
Latest technology offers several security options such picture password, fingerprint reader, 2-step verification, and other related things to ensure complete safety of the device. Various IT manufacturers have emphasized on providing high-end security to your devices by incorporating bio-metric features and fingerprint readers that generally don’t match with any other individual in the entire world.
Install latest software update
The last, but not the least, is the installation of the updates that keep your device ready to fight back several threats that take leverage of old software and their security loopholes to spread the infection. Therefore, it is recommended to keep your software updated with the latest security patches and bug fixes made available by the authorized vendors. Some of the operating systems (OS) also come with an ‘Automatic Update’ feature that makes sure that you never miss out any important update.
It’s true that an effective antivirus protects your online security and your device from various potential attacks, but the above mentioned tips can also help in preventing the same. Apart from these, practicing safe browsing habits, encrypting the sensitive data, restricting unauthorized access, and creating regular backups can also help you to fight against severe online threats.
Cases of digital disasters in which the data saved on your PC or mobile devices gets wiped off by malware, online accounts getting hacked, or you becoming a hapless victim of identity theft are becoming common these days. After connecting via the internet, you are automatically subjected to millions of online threats such as viruses, malware, worms and phishing scams, if you haven’t employed adequate safeguards.
If you don’t want to get into situations like those mentioned above, go through the following tips to ensure the security of your PC and mobile devices:
Perform a periodic security checkup
Protect your PC with two-way firewall
The firewall is an important security tool which monitors and filters inbound web traffic and e-mails to prevent hackers from accessing your PC in an unauthorized manner. It acts as a funnel to filter out mails and traffic coming from a malicious sender or website.
To prevent malware and other malicious programs from sending out data from your PC you need to employ a two-way firewall so that the firewall can also monitor outgoing traffic. However, the Windows OS comes with a firewall but it only monitors incoming traffic by default. Therefore, for impeccable protection from malicious web traffic and e-mails, you must employ a two-way firewall.
Reputed antivirus software suites such as Norton Internet Security or McAfee Internet Security provide two-way firewall. But even if they don’t, consider using two-way firewall as a separate program to safeguard your PC.
Keep your Wi-Fi security up-to-date
It is important that you always connect to an encrypted and secure Wi-Fi connection. In case you are not using an encrypted connection or not using passwords while connecting, it is probable that someone would take undue advantage of this vulnerability. Hackers can connect to the same network to intercept your Internet traffic. To prevent this kind of situation or unauthorized access you are recommended to setup a wireless router with wireless security protocols including Wi-Fi Protect Access (WPA) or WPA2.
There is a simple method of checking whether your wireless router is secured or not. Get the list of all available wireless networks in Windows and see how many of them are having a warning indicator next to them. The networks that are not encrypted would show a warning signal whereas the encrypted networks would show you the kind of security they have. If you find your network not secured then refer to the manual that you have received with the router and go through the instructions to turn on the encryption.
Employ OpenDNS for content filtering
Content filtering is another very effective way of protecting your PC from malicious web traffic and programs. You are recommended to use OpenDNS content filtering to keep malicious agents away from your PC. Apart from adult content, the OpenDNS can also block malicious content coming from websites that spread viruses.
Ensure using PIN protection for mobile devices
The trend of using smartphones and tablets is rising. Today many of us use mobile devices such as mini computers which is also used for e-mailing as well as storing important files, photos and videos. When these devices get stolen or lost there remains a huge probability that the stored stuff would be misused once the device reaches wrong hands. The best way of preventing such kind of situation is to enable the smartphone or tablet with lock screen protection. Once enabled, the device would require a PIN or password every time the user wants to use it.
There may be different ways to enable PIN or password protection on various devices but it is provided with every smartphone and tablet. You just need to explore the features and understand how to do it. Once you start using the screen lock feature, you become partially relieved from the worry of data misuse in case of loss and theft.
By using the above mentioned tips you can prevent majority of online threats responsible major digital disasters. By using tools such as firewall and antivirus software however, you reduce the extent of threat considerably but total security from viruses, malware and other types of threats can only be achieved by combining the security tools with the standard norms of internet usage.
