Another in the series - Updated Windows Security

From Service Pack 2 onwards, Windows XP has had a firewall. If you have an older copy of XP you really should have done the free upgrade to SP3. I don’t think an older Windows XP would last long on the Internet, it would get infected pretty quickly.

But what is the firewall and how do you check it is on?

If you do a right click on “My Network Places” and go to properties, you will see all the network connections on your machine. The wireless and wired “local area connections”. Each one should have the padlock icon indicating it is protected.

To turn the firewall on, right click your connection, properties, advanced and there is the firewall settings button. Easy.

What does it do? Well, it stops uninvited external connections. In other words, Network stuff can’t connect to you but you can still connect to it.

Why? Well if you have the firewall off, any virus on any machine on the same network can infect you. So all the other computers on your work, home or wireless networks could be trying to infect you. This is bad. If you use public wireless (like at a conference, cafe etc) this is really bad.

There is no need to buy any firewall products. It is built in to Windows. Yes it isn’t the greatest firewall ever but it works nicely for most people. The only time you might consider an upgrade is if you use services that need to publish to the Internet such as web servers, ftp servers, or maybe gaming or voice servers. If you need this type of thing, you probably are not reading my blog, you’re probably an IT expert. The rest of us don’t need more than Windows provides.