Network Security -- Who is watching you?

All computers, personal or business, contain information that should be secure.

Most people connect to the Internet with either a modem, or some form of broadband such as cable modem or DSL. While the former may not concern themselves too much with this (unless they leave their connection open), the later should be concerned how their computer(s) appear on the Internet. Most broadband connection types leave your computer permenently connected to the Internet. This enables the curious and sometimes malicious individual to scan, and possibly gain access to your computer.

We are in the process of planning the design of a basic network port scanner that you can use to scan your computer for possible vulnerabilites that may exist on you compter. It will then report this information to you, and perhaps provide a means for fixing the vulnerability.

One way you can thwart these scans is to employ a firewall. If you are the savvy computer type, I would recommend taking that old Pentium 200 you are using for a door stop, and turing it into a standalone Linux or BSD firewall/router. We plan to provide more information on how to do this in the future, so keep checking back.

Another type of firewall, is the personal firewall. Examples of these are produced by the folks at McAfee who are known for their antivirus program. There are also a number of free personal firewall programs which can be installed. To find some of them, go to google, and do a search for personal firewall products and you should get some free results. A good example of this would be ZoneAlarm provided by the friendly folks at Zone Labs.