I spend a lot of time with security related solutions for PCs.
My basic recommendations for home PCs are:
- Up-to-date anti-virus for Windows PCs (Mac OS X may not need this)
- Current operating system patches for any OS (use auto update and latest versions XP SP2 or Tiger 10.4)
- Use a simple network firewall (part of most new and cheap routers and switches)
- Use a personal firewall on each system (Windows or OS-X Firewall or third party)
- Anti spyware for Windows PCs (Mac OS X doesn't seem to suffer from this)
The only bit of this that I struggled with was a recommendation for anti-spyware software - most of them just didn't work that well, Spybot and Ad-Aware are free but not very effective and Microsoft's AntiSpyware beta works better but suffers from too many annoying alerts and questions with poor explanations. I finally came across a commercial product that works very well and is affordable (under $20 for the first year, half that each year after) called CounterSpy. My experience is based upon having to spend hours cleaning up after family would visit a site that would install spyware. Even after cleaning the spyware with ALL of the other tools, CounterSpy still found active spyware and was able to completely remove it. I have also tried the Internet Security Suites by anti-virus vendors but their anti-spyware components are even weaker than the free products and I don't recommend at this point that you rely upon them. The insidious thing about spyware tools is that many of those advertised are actually spyware tools and fraudulent be very careful about any brand that is not mainstream and avoid the pop-up ads.
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