People often ask me about the best way toconfigure their computer to protect against threats, such as worms andTrojan horses. They say they have installed antivirus protection andnever open unexpected email attachments. But they wonder if that isenough. Antivirus protection is certainly an important part of aneffective protection solution. It has the ability to detect knownthreats as well as many new ones via heuristic technologies. But thereis a second technology that can be added to help complete the picture:a firewall.
While antivirus software helps to protect thefile system against unwanted programs, a firewall helps to keepattackers or external threats from getting access to your system in thefirst place. Most people are aware that worms often travel throughemail. They generally arrive as an attachment to an email that the useris enticed to click on by the text of the email itself. We call thesethreats “mass-mailing worms.” The best thing to do with...
