How to Protect your computer from Viruses and Trojans

Computer Security:-

How to protect your computer from Virus?

Viruses and other kinds of malware slow your computer down and leave your private information vulnerable. Here’s how to protect your computer. To keep your computer healthy, it’s important to be aware of viruses and other malware that could slow performance, access your private information, and even delete files and programs. Malware is a harmful form of software that is used to send spam, host a phishing site, or steal your identity by monitoring your keystrokes without your knowledge. While there are several different types of malware, they can often be prevented with the same simple steps.

 Security Features:

• Network firewall: The Action Center ensures that Windows Firewall (or a third-party firewall) is enabled and protecting your PC against malicious Software that might travel to
your PC via a network or the Internet.
• Windows Update: Like Windows XP and Vista, Windows 7 includes an Automatic Updates feature that can automatically download and install critical Security fixes from Microsoft the moment they are released. Action Center ensures that Automatic Updates is enabled.
• Virus protection:  Although Windows 7 doesn’t ship with any antivirus Protection, Action Center still checks to ensure that an antivirus service is Installed and up-to-date. Modern antivirus solutions are designed to integrate With Windows Action Center so that the system can perform this monitoring Function.
• Spyware and unwanted software (malware) protection: Windows 7, like Vista, ships with Windows Defender, the malware protection suite. Action Center will monitor Windows Defender (or your anti-spyware solution of Choice) and ensure its running and using the latest definitions.
• Internet security settings: The Action Center ensures that Internet Explorer 8 Is configured in a secure manner. If you change any IE security settings Action Center will warn you about this issue.

Windows Defender:

Over the years, hackers have come up with new and inventive ways to attack PCs. Recently, spyware, one of the most pervasive and difficult forms of malware yet invented, Has become
a serious issue. For this reason, Windows 7 includes an integrated antispyware and anti-malware package called Windows Defender. Unlike some security products, you won’t typically see Windows Defender, as it’s designed to work in the background, keeping your system safe; but if you’d like to manually scan your system for malware or update your spyware definitions, you can do so by loading the Windows Defender application, Available through the Start menu.
Windows Defender does occasionally show up as an icon in the taskbar notification Area. This generally happens when the tool has been unable to download new definitions, the files it uses to ensure that its antispyware database is up-to-date. In such a Case, you can click the Windows Defender icon and trigger a manual download of the Latest updates.

 

Windows Firewall:
Windows Firewall is initially configured to block any unknown or entrusted connections
To the PC that originate over the network. You can enable exceptions to this behavior via
The Allowed Programs list, which you can access by clicking the link Allow a program or
Feature through Windows Firewall. Typically you just leave the settings as is, of course.
Depending on the network type (Home, Work, or Public) chosen when Windows 7 connects
To a network, some programs and features are automatically configured to communicate
Through the firewall.

Windows Update:

With Windows 98 over a decade ago, Microsoft introduced a Web-based service called
Windows Update that provided software updates to Windows users. That service has
Since been superseded by Microsoft Update, which also provides updates to many other
Microsoft software products. In Windows Vista, Windows Update was moved into the operating
System and made a client application, eliminating the number of Web browser hoops
You had to jump through to keep your operating system up-to-date. Windows 7 continues
To carry the Windows Update torch, making a few subtle changes for the good.

Cleaning Malware:

Most of us are aware, that malware files usually hide in the user profile section. So I did a brief study. The study included about 10 computers in a mixed environment. Surf all sorts of websites (including hank panky ones). USE Free C Cleaner to clean up your temporary files, and then RUN the malware program again. NONE of the computers were infected in RUN Moral of the story: Run a System clean up at every start up and you might save money on the Anti Malware subscription. Obviously this is not a "real time protection" protection!

In Private Browsing:

In Private Browsing turns off IE’s ability to locally store or retain browser history,Temporary Internet files, form data, cookies and user names, and passwords. It does Allow you to download files and add sites to your Favorites. By default, IE add-ons like Toolbars are
disabled in In Private Browsing mode, but you can change that from Internet Settings if desired. A related feature, In Private Filtering, is a first step in addressing the way in which many
Web sites share data with each other. Consider a mainstream Web site like wsj.com, for
The Wall Street Journal. This site is certainly reputable, but it utilizes advertising services
That work across multiple non-WSJ Web sites. Once these services have collected Information about you on wsj.com, they can track you across other sites that utilize the same services. This
is usually innocuous, but it’s possible that a malicious site could take Advantage of this capability and deliver dangerous content via other sites.