Protecting Your Computer and Data

Your computer and the data on it need to be constantly protected. Without protection, your hardware can be permanently damaged, and your data can be either damaged or stolen.

So what should you do to protect yourself (and your computer)?
At the very least, buy and use a surge protector. If your hardware is hit by an electrical surge, it could easily “fry” the motherboard and/or crash your hard drive. In such a case, you might be able to repair your PC or recover portions of data from your hard drive – at a cost of lost time and money.

Next, protect your data from malware and malefactors. Turn on the firewall that is included with your OS. Also, install and use anti-virus software (and keep it up-to-date!) To be even safer, you can install and use anti-malware software to protect yourself from spyware, Trojans, etc.

All of the recommendations above shouldn’t cost much at all. Free firewall, anti-virus and anti-malware software is readily available. As such, you may only have to pay (and not very much) for a surge protector.