E-Business
Issue No. 2 - September/October 2001
Plundered PCs. Computers, the Internet and Security Issues
by David Twiss
Finally got your business on e—mail? Great. Maybe you’ve got a web site; how about a small LAN in the office to connect your handful of PCs so they can share the laser printer, files and the internet connection?
Many South Australian SMEs are around about this stage with their uptake of computer technology, and just like adopting any new business tool there are good practices and poor practices. Figuring it all out yourself can be both time consuming and expensive. One of my favourites is the company that connects to the internet without a firewall to protect itself.
When you network PCs you want it to be easy; out of the box, plug it in and it just works. To achieve that, just about all your PC’s networking options are turned on by default. If you’re connecting PCs in the office, it doesn’t matter. You can trust your staff not to deliberately bugger things up, but when you connect to the Internet you probably don’t expect to share your hard drive with anyone who chooses to connect to it — yet that’s the default behaviour.
MAKE SURE YOU ARE PROTECTED
Most of us can still recall the Grim Reaper ads for Aids awareness and the message “always use a condom”. Well a similar concept applies when connecting to the Internet; make sure you are protected. A firewall is how you stay safe.
A firewall program inspects each packet of data arriving from the Internet before passing it to your PC. The power of the firewall is its ability to pass data on selectively. The firewall can be configured to pass only certain types of traffic, and to explicitly block other types.
So what’s on offer? If you have a single PC connected to the Internet, a personal firewall is the choice. A personal firewall is a piece of software that you load onto your PC, like a virus scanner. One of the most respected of the personal firewalls is ZoneAlarm from Zone Labs. Download it yourself from http://www.zonelabs.com. ZoneAlarm is ...
