Folks, it’s all OPSEC. I just couldn’t resist a quote from an old co-worker of mine. Our friend and frequent contributor Kirk Dunaway has some great guidance for you here. Having sat next to Kirk for over two years I can tell you that I personally have averted many a disaster by taking his advice. Read and heed!

Tips from a guy who has been asked to look at a lot of peoples computer problems…

OPSEC? Well, ish. I can throw words like vulnerability, intent, survey and OPSEC measures at this, to justify the fact that I am submitting something on the fringe of OPSEC to this blog, but I just thought I would pass along some free advice.

1. Cannot stress the importance of anti-virus software. There are many offered, at various costs (from free to $$$), just make sure you have it on there. The major differences are some offer better protection but are slower, some are faster but protect less and some fall in the middle. My advice is to stay with recognizable name brands if you are not sure.

2. Firewalls really do work! A computer, by default, listens and accepts all kinds of traffic, regardless whether you are using that type of traffic or not. Bad guys use these typically unused traffic types to attack your system. A firewall shuts down that vulnerability. Of course, there is some pain at first (yes, let me check my email, and remember!!! Yes, please, I want to access the internet!!!), but once set up it is relatively invisible. The protection it provides is very valuable. There are hardware firewalls, but I still recommend loading a software firewall on your system (free or $$$).

3. There are adware identifying software programs available, if you are concerned with someone tracking your surfing habits. Load up and scan away.

4. Currency is huge. Anti-virus, operating system, firewall, etc, are of little use against the latest badware if your system software is not up to date. By all means set up whatever you can to automatically update. If you do not automatically update, at least manually update once a week. If you do automatically update, perform a manual update once a month to make sure automatic update picks up everything.

5. Spend a few bucks, buy an external USB hard drive at least as large as your computer hard drive, and copy off important stuff once a month. You can export your browser favorites and email contacts (and emails, if you know where to look), then copy everything over manually. Or you can buy backup software to do it all for you. But regardless, bad viruses do disable computers, and hard drives fail, so keep that 2nd copy in case you have to start over.

6. Put an entry in your email contact list that contains your own email address. Like “ZZZZME”, so it can be ignored at the end. But then if you are infected, and some virus is sending itself out using the contact list in your email, you will know.

7. Turn off your computer when not in use. Most bad guys know we do not use our computers at night, so that’s when they use them. Shut it down, and reduce your window of vulnerability.

8. If you think you have been infected, and you have current virus software, shut down your system. Disable your network connection (unplug or turn off wireless access point). Now power up, and keep pressing the “F8” key while booting up. This will eventually give you a boot menu. Select “Safe Mode”, and when it comes up run a thorough virus scan. Your virus software should be able to clean any bad stuff in Safe Mode. If not, call in the cavalry.

9. If you think you have been infected, and you do not have current virus software, try an online virus scanner (like the free one from TrendMicro) to see if you can repair it.

Anyway, these tips could save you from a couple hundred bucks getting your computer cleaned to losing your hard drive (and how many years worth of digital pictures?). Oh yea, critical information, risk, and threats.

Kirk out.