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If your computer can connect to the Internet, and like most of us you are not a genuis-level computer guru, you need several computer security applications to protect it from the broad spectrum of computer threats that will attempt and sometimes succeed to infiltrate it. While the Internet provides us with an astounding amount of wonderful oppurtunities, pleasures and possibilities, personal or commercial, it is also the primary source of threats to the integrity of our computer systems. They come in a number of types and there are security applications that deal with them.

Computer viruses may be old hat, but they still abound. They are self-replicating computer programs that can produce effects on your computer ranging from irritating to catastrophic, depending on how sadistic their creator is. Stopping them arriving at your computer is difficult as they can reach you in myriad ways, so to protect your computer from them you first need a good anti-virus application. Then you need to ensure that the "virus definition file" is updated, either automatically or at least regularly, preferably daily or at start-up. A company providing good anti-virus software will provide rapid updates to protect you from new viruses and their software should feature some form of resident monitor to catch newly arriving viruses. The German company Grisoft that produces AVG, including a free version for personal use, does this particularly well, with prompt and frequent updates that can be automatically downloaded. However, all anti-virus applications are playing catch-up. They can not realistically protect you from viruses they are unaware of.

Viruses predominantly arrive at your computer from two sources. Email attachments and websites you visit. When a virus infects a computer it typically transmits copies of itself as an email attachment to everyone in the email address contact list of the infected computer. The subject line will be something innocuous and obviously the sender address will be that of someone you know, otherwise you wouldn't be on their address list, hopefully. Always verify with the supposed sender that they did indeed send you an email with an attachment BEFORE you open it. Large companies transacting significant amounts of business over the Internet should have extensive anti-virus protection and network security specialists insuring their webpages are as safe as possible. Smaller companies may have less financial resources to provide this, and casual webpages

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