Home Business IT - Protect Your Business and Yourself

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Home Business IT - Protect Your Business and Yourself

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Protecting Yourself And Your Business

You’re probably aware issues such as computer viruses, cyber attacks, spyware, adware and more. Do not access the Internet before you have a firewall and virus protection in place.

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Windows XP has its own integrated firewall, but many I.T. professionals have doubts about effectiveness. In a recent article for Tech Republic, Mike Mullins points out that while Windows XP does an adequate job of monitoring incoming information, but is less effective when a program on your computer attempts to initiate an outgoing connection to any Internet address. In fact, by the time Windows alerts you, the connection has already occurred. According to Mullins:

“…a firewall mechanism that only works one way is a security feature

— not a firewall. Thanks to viruses, worms, Trojans, and a host of

other malware and spyware that arrive on your computer daily, you

need to be able to control communications from both directions.”

The bottom line: while Windows security is better than nothing at all, you’ll definitely need a “real” firewall that requires minimal monitoring from you. The Firewall Guide (http://www.firewallguide.com) has some good information on the various firewalls, virus protection, and other security tools that are available for free as well as purchase. In addition, you’ll learn about email clients and browsers that can be used as an alternative to those integrated into the Windows OS.

One free utility that is practically indispensable is Ad-Aware SE. This is not an anti-virus program, but one that allows you to monitor the ad-ware and spy-ware that is frequently deposited on your hard drive by commercial web sites. These are used to track surfers’ Internet usage. Unchecked, these little bits of code accumulate on the hard drive and can eventually wreak havoc to the point where the computer won’t even boot up. Ad-Aware is simple to use and is available free at http://www.adawareresource.com/co/adawareresource/?sid=M2AG0002cGS.

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Before installing and activating any third-party firewall and virus protection, you’ll want to be sure to de-activate the Windows security system, as having more than one firewall running at the same time can cause major conflicts that can harm your system. Simply go to your control panels, select the Windows Firewall icon , and follow the instructions for de-activating the application.

1. E-mail Issues

Simply having a firewall and virus protection does not mean you can simply relax and depend on it to do everything. Granted, these protections will do about 98% of the work for you, but you’ll still need to do a bit of monitoring – especially when it comes to e-mail. Many malicious programs arrive as e-mail attachments, and many businesses simply no longer accept attachments from unfamiliar addresses. The safest course of action: if you receive an e-mail from an unrecognized address and it has any sort of attachment – delete it.

The other problem frequently encountered by individuals as well as businesses is unsolicited commercial e-mail, popularly known as “spam.” Most e-mail programs have a “bulk mail” folder to which you can direct all e-mails from specified addresses and domains. Often however, you are limited to a certain number of these. Alternatively, some e-mail programs allow you to direct all e-mail to the “bulk mail” folder except that from addresses and domains you specify.

The best cure for spam is really prevention. If your business has a website (and it should), avoid putting your e-mail address on the site as a link or hyper-text. The reason is that small programs, sometimes known as webcrawlers or bots, are constantly monitoring the Web and harvesting e-mail addresses from html code.

Obviously, you need an e-mail contact to enable your clients and customers to reach you. There are two solutions here: the expensive and complicated way is to have visitors to your website use a form – similar to that shown in Figure 19 – that hides your e-mail.

Setting up this type of form takes some knowledge of HTML, although a program like Macromedia’s Dreamweaver can facilitate the process. Otherwise, there are two other methods commonly used:

4. Display your email as hypertext, but do it in one of the following ways:

   • yourname at domain.com : here you eliminate the “@” sign, which is one of the signals that bots and webcrawlers look for

   • “yourname,” followed by the “@” sign, followed by “domain.com”: the e-mail address is broken up and thus “invisible” to webcrawlers and bots

2. Create a graphic file in Photoshop or GIMP using the text tool.

Since the e-mail above is essentially a “picture” (if it weren’t, you would be able to click on it and bring up an e-mail client), bots and webcrawlers – which search actual code - would be unable to “read it.”

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