Computer Security for the Home and Small Office [Paperback]

Computer Security for the Home and Small Office" addresses the long-neglected security needs of everyday users in the home, company workstation, and SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) categories, with emphasis on system hardening, eliminating malware, user and Internet privacy, encryption, and data hygiene. The book offers comprehensive tutorials for protecting privacy, preventing system attacks and, most important, avoiding difficulties from buggy programs and software laced with hidden functions and networking capabilities. Furthermore, the book is packed with information about open-source products with related security strategies for Windows users. One recurrent strategy: replacing insecure closed-source applications and utilities with safer open-source alternatives, thereby eliminating numerous routes to system exploitation and privacy invasion. Also included is plenty of guidance for Linux users, and a full chapter weighing the advantages and disadvantages of migrating to Linux--a step that can greatly simplify computer security, even for the novice user. Read a review from the Sydney Morning Herald Check out other great reviews from About.com and the Golden Triangle PC Club

Dear Reader,
The media bring us daily reports of malicious hacking, virus and worm outbreaks, spyware, privacy invasion, identity theft, and commercial profiling via the Internet. We hear much about these threats, yet we're rarely told how realistic each one is, or offered much help in avoiding them. Books covering computer security tend to fall into two categories: technical manuals that can't be deciphered without substantial prior knowledge, and books for users offering a few simplistic bromides. What's long been lacking is a computer security manual that's understandable to the average user, yet truly comprehensive. So I decided to write one.

In this book you'll find patient, step-by-step tutorials for protecting your privacy, surfing the Web anonymously, and hardening your Windows or Linux system against attacks from outside, and, more importantly, from within -- from software that's full of bugs or laced with hidden functions and secret networking capabilities. There is also a good deal of background material that will demystify computer security and help you to become a better judge of the threats you need to worry about, and the ones you can safely dismiss. It is neither difficult nor expensive to harden a computer system or small office network. Nor is it difficult to frustrate malicious hackers, virus writers and privacy invaders. Computer security is not a black art. You can learn it, and you will.

Thomas C. Greene

Thomas C. Greene is associate editor of The Register , the leading independent IT news daily, where he has been a senior editor and columnist for 5 years. Tom covers cybercrime, computer and network security, and Washington politics and legislation related to information technology.