Daily Dose of Common Sense

Hard really is better than soft.

While trying to explain to a friend why clicking on untrusted links or attachments is bad, I came up with an analogy. It’s the equivalent of walking down the street and having some stranger hand you an opaque container filled with unknown liquid, and you discarding or ignoring your common sense and swallowing the stuff.

I don’t have a good analogy, however, for this next bit of tech advice, which is common sense for the pocket-protector set, but may seem like an arbitrary edict for anyone without a degree in computer science.

Whenever you buy a new computer, it doesn’t matter what kind it is (Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.), ALWAYS connect it to the Internet via a router (which acts as a hardware firewall).

The reason is that even if the computer is equipped with the best software firewall, when the computer is brand new, it hasn’t had a chance to download the latest security updates. Therefore, in those first tens of minutes when you are setting up the PC and getting those updates, the computer is extremely vulnerable.

In case you think I’m exaggerating, you should know that people have done studies that have found the time it takes for an un-patched (missing the latest security updates) system to get infected can be as low as four minutes.

You don’t need a fancy firewall like a corporate office may have, any cheapo home router will do. This is because the function in the router that  allows it to share the Internet connection with multiple computers also means that it blocks any connections originating from the Internet (as opposed to originating from one of the computers connected to the router).

This is not to say that you shouldn’t bother with software firewalls (whether built-in to your operating system or part of 3rd party security software). You should have a software firewall as well. Computer security experts call this kind of layering “defense in depth”. Think of the hardware firewall as the doorman or security guard in an apartment building. You still want to keep your own door locked too.

So, don’t let the hacker grinches out there ruin the experience of setting up a new computer this holiday seasons. And yes, I realize that I did come up with an analogy after all. It’s a Christmas miracle!

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.