Even if you are new to computers and the internet, you have probably heard that you should at least have an antivirus or internet security suite in in place while surfing the internet. Does it stop there, do you need extra computer security products?

That depends on how much you value your online safety and security. The purpose of antivirus programs is to protect your home computer against a virus infection in the first place. Protection against malware and spyware comes as an added bonus. This is just one part of computer security.

There are new cyber pests being developed every hour, so you better get an anitivirus with a built-in proactive defense mechanism. Proactive meaning that the program can defend itself against viruses that are not in its virus database yet.

Malware comes in different forms and flavors such as Trojans which usually contain spyware or even worms. The definition of these terms is beyond the scope of this article, but let it be suffice to say that you do not want any of these pests on your computer.

As mentioned before, most, if not all anivirus programs also provide some sort of malware protection.
It is however advisable to have a dedicated antispyware program running in combination with your antivirus software. If one cyber-pest tries to get through your protection it will at least have two programs to deal with.

The final -and most complicated- computer security defense product every consumer should have in place is a firewall. The complexities in configuring a firewall are even difficult to understand for IT professionals, unless he or she is a network administrator of course.

I would not recommend software firewalls to the average user. These kind of firewalls traditionally are a part of internet security suites. Some of them constantly ask you if you want to allow this or that program to access the internet. Deny access to the wrong program just once and before you know it you won't be able to access the internet yourself. The reason being that you locked yourself out because of on an incorrect firewall configuration.

Just use a hardware firewall like a router which comes with the basic security settings already configured. Just having an out of the box router is a much better protection than a software firewall.
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