The Security Mentor

AOL and the National Cyber Security Alliance just ran a security survey of a few hundred home computer users. They said the state of home computer security is bad. I say that computer owners aren't getting the information they need.

First, the scary stuff. Eighty percent of the computers had spyware on them, with 93 pieces of spyware on the average infected computer.

Ninety percent of the infected people didn't know they were infected. That tells anyone willing ot listen that the industry's falling down on the job of telling its customers how to use their computers safely. Two thirds of the people surveyed didn't have a firewall, two thirds didn't have up-to-date antivirus software, and a seventh had no antivirus software at all. Sixty percent thought they were safe.

What else has the industry failed to explain? Well, three out of five people surveyed didn't know the difference between an antivirus program and a firewall.

Here's what you need to know if you're a normal person running a Windows machine and exploring the riches of the Internet. A firewall limits what can happen over the network: it prevents problems like people reading your shared files. Antivirus programs try to stop bad programs from running: they defend you against things the firewall allowed because it "thought" you wanted them. You need both. You also need at least one good anti-spyware program like SpyBot Search&Destroy or AdAware (AdAware's web site is down right now).