Secure Your Home Network like a Pro (Part 1)

(Writer's Note: This is the first in a series of four articles on improving home computer security.)

So you've got a computer at home and high-speed internet. Your computer vendor "thoughtfully" provided you with a lot of productivity and media software (junk) and probably a six-month subscription to McAfee or Norton. Your ISP was probably thoughtful enough to provide you an Internet security suite from one of those vendors as well. So you choose one and renew it for $60 a year. It's the price of being safe on the Internet, right?

Wrong.

Internet security suites do protect your computer, mostly. If you get malware through your browser though, it can turn off your security software before the real-time security scan can do anything about it. Worse, if you don't have a broadband router, it will turn off your firewall and open up your computer to additional attacks. Fortunately, there's a cheaper and safer way to secure your computer. The "downside" is that you'll have to learn a little about security and take charge of your computer. But there are a lot of good reasons to change your security habits:

• Malware can take over your computer, rendering it inoperable
• Malware can search your computer for personal information, such as social security numbers, credit card numbers and bank account information and send it back to identity thieves
• Malware can encrypt your hard drive and force you to pay a criminal to get your data back
• Malware can use your computer to send out spam, host phishing sites, or participate in a denial-of-service attack on businesses as leverage in extortion scams
• Malware is often impractical or impossible to clean up

So even if you aren't worried about what criminals find on your hard drive, they can still use your computer to ruin other people's lives - and even the best AV packages may not be able to stop them until several days after the malware payload is discovered.