A Firewall basically acts as a regulatory and monitoring body between computer network and different zones of trust (a zone of trust is simply a separate area of coverage - i.e. home network is a zone and the internet is another zone).

The basic idea of a firewall is to regulate the traffic and provide controlled flow of data between different zones of trust (i.e. between your computer and the Internet for example). A network administrator or needs to understand the basic understanding of network protocols and computer security while using a firewall failing which may result in a firewall acting as a useless security tool. Fortunately, a lot of products on the market allow you to set up firewalls on your own PC (aka "Personal Firewalls) or on your home network without much of the hassle - some of them just need to be plugged in or installed and you can leave it at that.

Concerns for the security breach have reached the corporate boardrooms. There has been a growing demand for security professionals who can understand the information security and its implications. Requirements for those who can understand and troubleshoot problems related to information security have increased over the past few years. This means more and more certified professionals certified in the relevant field have been in demand.

Network and security specialist with a few years of industry experience prefer to go in for vendor neutral CompTIA’s Security+ certification. The SY0-101 exam code for the certification was introduced in December 2002. It is a first step towards more advanced certifications such as CISSP, SSCP, ISC2 and SANS GIAC. The certification exam consists of 100 questions to be completed in 90 minutes. It is multiple choice question paper in English language. The certification questions are grouped into categories in the follow proportions:

The nightmare is not over! I had just removed spyware from my system and had my registry cleaned but now my mouse is again behaving erratically! After the horrifying experience of the spyware on my system, I had installed AVG anti-spyware (www.grisoft.com) AVG anti-virus (free.grisoft.com) and ZoneAlarm firewall (http://www.zonelabs.com)

ZoneAlarm is one of the best firewalls that prevent your internet connection from hackers and other security breaches but they aren't a cure for everything as adware can be installed from a lot of different sources such as email or browser plugins or even software you install yourself!

Want to learn the basics of security in the computer world? If you do, then I'm glad you're here. I call myself the SecurityNovice and I will do my best to introduce you to security concepts from a normal person's perspective (as much as possible) as my goal is to make sure that the most number of people understand security issues. The more people are informed, the more our virtual world becomes a much more secure place.

Why SecurityNovice? Mainly because I see myself as always a novice as I (and you) will soon learn that the ideas of security are ever-changing day by day. New security issues crop up almost every day, new terms and ideas spring up, some concepts fade away, and more.

I've just had a nightmare that lasted for more than a week. My system was unbelievably slow and when I opened MS office it took ages to open. When I started making entries in the excel sheet suddenly my cursor or mouse pointer jumped to unwanted places. It became so irritating that I just could not get hold of what was happening. It turned out to be a malicious Spyware program that did not pop up any ads or hamper my internet connection. But it took screenshots of my screen and transferred them to remote locations without my knowledge!

Just keep in mind ….

The first thing to really do is to know your computer well. I am going to stress this since this will help a lot in the early detection of problems. If you don't know what is "normal" for your PC, then you won't know what is "abnormal". Laughing

How to do this? Well, try to examine the internals of your PC (don't be scared to experiment at this point, just be logical and just use common sense when using your PC). An easy way is to press "CTRL-ALT-DEL" on your PC if you are using Windows XP or NT. For windows 95/98 users, it's similar but be sure to press that combination only once or else your computer is going to restart itself. A popup screen will appear where you can select "Task Manager...". (If you don't know what CTRL-ALT-DEL is, then just right click on any blank space on the taskbar.. the bar with the start button on it, and select "Task Manager" from the menu that appears).

Want to learn the basics of security in the computer world? If you do, then I'm glad you're here. I call myself the SecurityNovice and I will do my best to introduce you to security concepts from a normal person's perspective (as much as possible) as my goal is to make sure that the most number of people understand security issues. The more people are informed, the more our virtual world becomes a much more secure place.

Why SecurityNovice? Mainly because I see myself as always a novice as I (and you) will soon learn that the ideas of security are ever-changing day by day. New security issues crop up almost every day, new terms and ideas spring up, some concepts fade away, and more.

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