Security

Being Safe....

Email & Attachments

Email is a medium which can be used to pass computer viruses, offensive material and attachments that are really an annoyance at best and in a few cases be harmful to your computer data.

Fortunately all your email through Wealden Business supplied websites is filtered for any potentially threatening problems. - further filtering particularly for offensive material can be engaged by using 'Postini' messaging service which provides added security to your emails.
Please contact us for more information on this service.

Anti Virus & Firewall

Always ensure your computer has an anti-virus program installed. The best, in my opinion, is AVG and is also available as a free version for non-commercial use. There are other products, some of the well known ones are more of a hinderance and slow your computer down.

A lot of enhanced products offer Firewall protection - to stop intruders getting into your p.c. In most case this is not necessary and again often hampers proper working of your computer if not set up correctly.

The best protection comes via your router - the connection to the Internet you use. Choosing the right router makes all the difference. The 'Stateful Packet Inspection' type are best, for me Netgear is the product of choice - fitting one of these will give you an adequate firewall and peace of mind.

Wireless Connection

Wireless links are more and more prevalent - where I live two years ago there were 2 - 3 wireless connections available in the immediate proximity - now there are over 8 connections and a couple run unsecured...

An unsecured connection means that anybody within range can 'piggy - back' on your Internet connection. This in itself is not a problem. The problem comes because not only can the Internet be accessed - so can your computer.

First thing to do is makes sure you have a secure WEP (Wireless Equivalent Privacy 64Bit) set up.

Just that step alone will prevent most intruders. A lot of people set up for much higher levels 128Bit and PSK - but all this does is increase the traffic overhead on your connection and slows you speed down.

Ideally in addition to WEP 64Bit set up access for only certain MAC addresses. This is done within the router and will give you total security without the traffic overhead. This means that only computers you allow can connect to your wireless connection.

Web Browser

Web browsing with the right browser is important. Unfortunately running the standard browser on your p.c. is 'cannon fodder' to attack via the Internet. Browser of choice; Firefox.