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As recent press has shown, the internet is plagued by constant attacks by hackers, trying to steal confidential information and attack Microsoft products using viruses.  As soon as your computer connects to the internet, your system is open to attack from hackers and malicious software and therefore vulnerable to computer viruses and spyware.  A virus on your computer can be just plain infuriating, causing programs to shut down ad hoc, or can completely corrupt all the information on your hard disk.

You might also want to control what your children do on the computer (or employees) to ensure that they are not accessing sites which pose a danger to the computer or to your reputation - this is called content protection and is generally protected by installing parental controls software.

What is the danger of having no protection for your computer?

There are programs which constantly roam the internet looking for information - some of these are search engine robots, which search for information to ensure that search engines contain up to date information but others are more malicious.  Without firewall software these programs can find your computer connected to the internet and search your humble PC for data - they might allow other people to access files on your computer, or even personal data, such as passwords, bank details and registration details for your installed software.  Some are known as key loggers, in that they will make a note of every key you press on your keyboard, allowing hackers to obtain your bank account details and passwords for example.  With a firewall installed, you control what information is passed between your computer and the internet, as well as what software can send data to the internet. Norton Internet Security and The Shield both provide high quality and well maintained firewalls.

You also need to obtain protection against spyware - this can tends to fall into two categories.  (1) Software which keeps an eye on your usage of the internet and reports it back to a central source, which is then used to direct advertising at your machine based upon the types of site you visit (this can be in the form of popups).  (2) Rogue dialler software which amends your internet connection so that you connect to the internet via someone else's site and they then have full access to everything that you do on the internet and can log all keypresses (see above) or even use a premium rate telephone number to connect you, incurring large charges for your use of the internet.  There are plenty of free antispyware programs available and we would always recommend the use of SpyBot - Search & Destroy.

Most importantly, you need some good quality antivirus software.  A computer virus is a rogue program which infects your system, replicating itself onto your hard disk, system registry, and any removeable media you use (such as CD-Rs, memory sticks and floppy disks).  The rogue program can therefore easily be transmitted from your computer to other computers through a disk (or other media) you pass onto someone else, emails you send or a network connection.  A virus can do lots of various things - it may go through your computer looking for information (similar to the methods above), or it may actually alter files on your PC, causing untold damage to programs and data.  What is worse is that not all viruses can be spotted straight away - they may be "time-bombs" and will simply log your system and decide what files to alter to cause the maximum damage, until a specified date and time, when they actually start attacking.  Norton Internet Security and The Shield both provide high quality and well maintained antivirus software.

Recent reports have also shown that Microsoft know that all of the Windows operating systems contain ongoing security risks and a recent update has been released which closes a security risk pointed out to them over 12 months ago.  With the recent admission that some of the Windows source code has been leaked to outside sources, now would seem an opportune moment to consider getting a firewall and antivirus software.

Finally, there are various websites which you would not want your children or employees to access - this may involve sites where they can view or download porn movies and photographs, stories or even paedophilia (children porn).  These sites are renown for installing rogue software alongside the pornographic images and text (such as premium rate diallers) as well as possibly bringing you into disrepute or even making you liable to prosecution.

What solutions are there?

Windows XP contains its own built-in firewall, however, this is not easily configurable and seems to cause more problems than it fixes.  There is also an added benefit in using a third party product which falls outside of Microsoft's control, particularly as many hackers aim specifically at software written by Microsoft.

AOL users also have the benefit of built in anti-virus checking of all emails (essential, as it is not easy to link third party anti-virus software to AOL) - however, this is limited to emails sent and received through AOL's own browser, and does not apply to external POP3 / SMTP email accounts.  AOL is striving to be the one-stop shop for internet access and recent adverts suggest that they are now supplying a firewall to its users, as well as spam remover, a Pop-up blocker and internet accelerator (in v9, currently in Beta version in the UK).  However, these facilities are quite limited in that they only apply to internet and email access through the actual AOL browser, whereas many users prefer to use Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera as an internet browser, as these tend to be less cluttered and more widely supported.

The Shield contains a fast anti-virus program (which appears to work more quickly than Norton Antivirus), firewall, pop-up blocker and even a Spyware detector.  All of which can be configured easily and help to protect your personal information from being passed over the internet, and each purchase comes complete with 1 years free updates (subsequent years are keenly priced at only $14.99).  The anti-virus program is ViRobot Expert - this works very well on our system although we did find one file which made it crash.  This has been sent to the software company for analysis - thankfully you can easily exclude one file from the scanning process.  Certainly ViRobot does not appear to slow the system down as much as Norton Antivirus.

In order to protect you from viruses, you are able to set regular system checks (or perform a manual one), as well as scan all incoming  emails (from a POP3 or Microsoft Exchange Server) before they are downloaded to your computer.  It will also scan all documents which may contain malicious macros before they are opened in MS Office or Internet Explorer (v5 or later).

The firewall constantly monitors your internet connection and will warn you about any attempts made by programs on your system to connect to the internet, or attempts made by other computers to connect to yours.  You are then able to allow or disallow these one at a time, in order to ensure that the information and files stored on your PC are safeguarded. With the ever increasing amount of time that PCs stay connected to the internet, this is essential and is the main task of any firewall.  It is also imperative that a firewall protects your personal information - to do this, you are able to specify personal information which is blocked from being released over the internet (except to a secure server) without your express permission.  However, The Shield goes one step further and can be configured to automatically cut off internet access if the system is left unattended for a specified period of time, or if the screen saver appears.  It will also automatically remove any personal information which may be stored on your PC as cookies by sites which you have visited, thus ensuring a greater degree of protection overall.

Many of The Shield's features are very similar to the popular Norton Internet Security product, but run more quickly and cost a lot less! However, we are a little confused by the packaging of the programs.  The Shield 2006 contains only the antivirus and firewall software, whereas the Shield 2006 Deluxe contains the antivirus, anti-spam and spyware protection (but no firewall which seems odd).  However, that said, it seems as though the market for spyware protection is rapidly diminishing, as Microsoft get ready to release their own proprietary anti-spyware program (currently in beta test version), and the ever popular free SpyBot - Search & Destroy.

With the added benefit of the pop-up blocker, and free technical support, this product is hard to beat on a value for money basis.

However, if you have a hi-speed computer and do not mind the extra system overheads, we would still recommend Norton Internet Security over The Shield, mainly because after 12 months, the software producers have still not addressed the problem of one file which could not be scanned.

For content protection, you need to install parental controls software, such as the ever popular CyberPatrol (or their server solution for networks (SurfControl) or NetNanny.  These programs allow you to control what sites can be surfed by which computer users at specific times of day - for example, companies may like to use it to prevent access to non work related websites during office hours.  They also monitor programs such as file sharing and chat.