With computing becoming more important within our daily lives, and the number of computers and mobile devices becoming more and more common, it becomes a prime target for malicious activities, ranging from identity theft, to scamming, to full denial of service (DoS) attacks using other people’s compromised computers.
With the free reign people have with the Internet, and the freedom to upload and download whatever they please, it becomes a prime way for people to upload their viruses and trojans, with hopes that people will be tricked and download the malware and allowing for them to start working.
But just because the Internet is a prime way for mischievous people to spread their creations doesn’t mean that you should avoid the Internet all together, as it’s a wonderful placed filled will all the information as well as entertainment that you could ever want. You wouldn’t refuse to go to the park just because you could drown in the lake, you would just take precautions to prevent yourself from falling in the lake, and the same thing can be said about the Internet.
With our computer sessions becoming more online, with features like online shopping and streaming on the rise, computer security has become exceedingly important. Many computer manufacturers, like Dell, HP, and Lenovo etc. will bundle anti-virus with a new computer. Usually third-party software obtained like this will only be on trial subscription, in the hopes that you sign up to a full subscription after the trail period expires.
Windows 10 comes with Windows Defender inbuilt to keep your computer safe, and as a start it does fairly well – better than no protection. It performs periodic scans of your machine to search for any traces or signatures of malicious files, and then quarantines them. However, Windows Defender doesn’t come with the more advanced features that a dedicated antivirus would have, with real time web protection blocking any websites that contains malware.
A good computer security software, aka anti-virus, is just like an intrusion detection (alarm) on your car or home. It must be there and must be of a reasonably good quality to thawt any intrusion attempts.
We must not underestimate the value of our digital assets. Almost entire record of our lives are now digital. Once compromised, we just don’t know what is going to hit us. From where. And when.
