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10 Biggest Security Risks, and How to Fix Them

by Jon Chase on April 20, 2010 at 12:50 PM


1. Leave Your Wi-Fi Wide Open

Leaving your Wi-Fi unprotected by a password, thus sharing your Internet connection with the rest of the world, may seem like a harmless and, heck, even a swell, neighborly thing to do. But, in the cyberworld, it's the equivalent of leaving all the doors and windows of your house open while you're away. If you haven't thoroughly protected all the PCs and other devices on your network, any passerby with even a modicum of "skillz" can hop on your network, and, with a little poking and probing, thoroughly infiltrate your PC.

What you should do:

Unless you have a background in IT and are confident you've locked your PCs down like Fort Knox, be sure to password-protect your network (see Passwords below), and, in your router's configuration menu, set it so that the SSID isn't broadcast, as doing so will make your network invisible to casual observers.

2. Don't Hide Behind a Firewall

It's useful to think of the Internet as a dark alley in the dodgiest part of town, in the worst city in the world. A place where even Chuck Norris doesn't walk alone. Thus it shouldn't come as a surprise that, at the moment you connect a PC to the Internet, it'll be probed for vulnerabilities within minutes by roving malicious programs, and, if any are found, will quickly be under siege. (That sounds hyperbolic, but a study from two years ago found an unprotected virgin PC would be infected in just four minutes after being connected to the Internet). This is so easily averted without spending a dime, and yet there are countless knuckleheads paying the price for not employing a simple firewall.

What you should do:

Every computer made in the past eight or so years already comes with a free, built-in firewall -- software that essentially plugs your computer's thousands of virtual ports. Think of a firewall as a magic cloak of invisibility that's also (fairly) bulletproof. If you haven't already, activate yours by going into the security settings on your computer and turning it on. Then forget about it. It's that simple. Occasionally, firewalls cause minor hiccups (especially when gaming or file-sharing with a Wi-Fi network), but it's nothing that isn't easily resolved with a simple Google search.


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