How's you virus protection?

When's the last time you thought about the virus protection on your computer? Often, we only talk about what to do after the infection has happened. However, there are ways to be proactive and in many cases avoid the infection altogether.

One basic way to be a little more secure is to find and fix the areas where a computer might be vulnerable. This might look like running an operating system that is no longer supported, such as Windows XP, or leaving outdated programs, that aren't being used, on the computer. In both of these instances, "doors" are open to an attack. Our advice, delete programs that you're not using. Not only will this free up space and help that computer to run faster, but it will also remove a possible entry point for a virus.

Of course, we can't talk about security without mentioning email. Plain and simple, be safe and cautious. Some things to look out for are the email address (do you recognize the sender?) and the formatting of the email (does the wording seem odd?).  

We've mentioned this a lot in the past, but always make passwords protecting critical information as cryptic as possible. The less they make sense, the harder they are to crack. Basically, don't use your birthday or easily found personal information.

No computer is unhackable, but why make it easy? So, take a few steps or as many as you can to protect that device.