How times change…

Today, computers have become so commonplace they’re even part of the required equipment list at a lot of schools. While this is fantastic, it also highlights something fundamental that schools recognise and most people, perhaps, do not; the need for a dedicated work machine.

In fact, it goes far deeper than just requiring students to have the machine. School networks are tightly locked down and restricted to try and prevent anything dangerous from coming in and ruining everybody’s day.

It’s a good practise, that of separating important data from play. Certainly, losing all the photos you were about to upload to facebook is a lot more preferable to losing all the video and photos you shot while your kids were learning to walk.

Having a separate, general purpose machine in the house for everybody to share is a much better option as, not only does it remove the problem of having the machine tied up when you need to use it, it means you have total control over what the machine is used for.

With the way the internet is progressing, it’s becoming increasingly risky (even with the right tools installed) putting a machine containing important data online. The number of viruses, trojans and other malware in the wild numbers tens of thousands and, because malware almost exclusively targets Windows users, the vast majority of households are at risk if not properly protected.

You might be thinking the need for an extra machine is unnecessary if you’re backing up data regularly. What you might not realise is that if a machine becomes infected with malware, the chances are fair you’ve also transferred it to your external backup drive, affecting at least some of the data on the drive (though we’d certainly never dissuade anybody from making regular backups).

The added risk, should you have a drive with infected data, is the malware can then be transferred to any machine you connect the drive to.

Not good for you, even worse if you infect somebody else’s computer.

Malware aside, there are also the fundamental risks inherent in sharing one machine with multiple users. It’s an all too familiar situation where somebody goes to look at a batch of photographs only to find the folder is missing and nobody has any idea what happened. Even having multiple user accounts doesn’t make you immune to somebody else’s unwitting mistakes.

The cost of data recovery, should something go terribly wrong, can be impressive so when the family computer is hit with something major (the law of averages predicts “when” more than “if”) it’s somewhat of a comfort when your own work is not only somewhere safe, it’s somewhere safe where you can use it while repairs or recovery are undertaken.

A separate general purpose computer coupled with regular backups from a well protected work machine is an incredibly hard act to beat. The reality is that sometimes hardware fails, sometimes computers become infected and sometimes people make mistakes.

And when that leaves your data and your ability to work unaffected, the extra cost is justified ten fold.

The good news is there are some simple preventative measures one can take to avoid much of the nastiness and, despite what anybody might tell you in an email or a popup, these tools are all wonderfully free and might help you avoid a call to the professionals.

At the VERY least you should be running an Anti-Virus program that offers good realtime protection in the form of email scanning and resident shield. Beyond this you should be running regular maintenance scans, be it automatically scheduled or manually.

Our recommended short list, which in most cases will get you out of trouble and keep you there, are:

Prevention

AVG Free

At it’s most basic level, the core antivirus engine of AVG is still solid but as each version of AVG has been released, more tools have been integrated. These days, along with the excellent antivirus engine, it integrates a capable Anti-Spyware, Link Scanner and ID Protection giving you good, basic all-round online protection. There’s also a paid version, which features even more tools, but for the vast majority of users AVG Free still remains one of the top picks. Automatically updates itself without the need for user interaction.

Other good choices for free protection:

Avast Antivirus

Avira Antivir

Maintenance

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free

Includes realtime protection, though not enabled by default. An excellent tool for regularly scanning your computer for malware (short for “Malicious Software”). A good tool to turn to at the first sign of trouble and as part of a regular scanning routine as it’s fast and effective. Should be manually updated before you scan.

Ad-Aware Free

Ad-Aware is a lot of people’s go-to guy for realtime anti-malware protection. Takes a while to scan but has a huge malware database and is very thorough. Good for performing a deeper scan after initially using Malwarebyes Anti-Malware.

Other good choices for free maintenance:

Spybot Search & Destroy

At the end of the day though…

As good as these programs are, sometimes gremlins will slip through. New malware is released constantly and people mutate known viruses and trojans to get past any protection you may be running. It’s a constant game that makes it crucial to ensure that you keep any protection and maintenance you use updated. Most applications will automatically do this for you but in some cases, manually updating is required and should be the first thing you do before scanning.

Probably even more valuable than the programs themselves is getting yourself into good computing habits where you’re using the tools you have installed effectively and regularly. Never listen to anybody who tells you there’s no need for any one aspect of your arsenal. You DO need to run an antivirus and you DO need to run regular scans. These are important facts of modern computing, plain and simple, and should never be up for negotiation

In future, we’ll be covering other oft-overlooked areas that can really save your bacon when it counts; the importance of backing up and separating work from play.

- Edan