Firewalls help protect a network from malicious intent that can disrupt/totally destroy data or even your hard drive. There are hardware and software versions of firewalls.
• Software firewalls – programs that examine data pockets on a network to determine whether to forward them to their destination or block them. An example of this is two-way firewall is Zone Alarm.
• Hardware firewalls – protect the entire network typically found in broadband routers. It uses packet filtering to examine the header of the packet to determine its source and destination. This information is compared to a set of pre-defined or user created rules which determine whether the packet is to be forwarded or dropped. An example of a hardware firewalls are Linksys and Cisco routers.
Anti-virus software is software used to prevent, detect and remove malware such as worms, Trojan horses, computer viruses and hijackers. Examples include Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Defender.
Disaster recovery is a process, policy, and/or procedure related to preparing for recovery or continuation of the technology infrastructure. This is vital to an organization after a natural or human-induced disaster. It is a subset of business continuity, focuses on the IT or technology systems that support business functions. The most common strategies for data protection are:
1. Backup recorded to a tape and sent off-site at regular intervals.
2. Backups make to a disk on site and automatically copied to offsite disks or made directly to offsite disks.
3. Replication of data to an offsite location, which overcomes the need to restore the data, often making use of storage area network technology.
4. Use of high availability systems which keep both the data and system replicated offsite. This enables continuous access to systems and data even after a disaster.
Periodic testing of backup restores is very important. It is needed to ensure the system works and your backup data is preserved and can be reached quickly to recover when something happens to your main backup location.
Cold sites are locations that are leased or bought. They come prewired for power with generators for backup and are ready for the hardware if there is a need to make the sites operational. This kind of site is the least expensive type of backup.
Hot sites are duplicates of the original site of the organization. They have full computer systems as well as near-complete backups of user data. Real time synchronization between the two sites may be used to completely mirror the data environment of the original site using wide area network links and specialized software. They exist so that the original organization can relocate after a disaster with minimal losses to normal operations. It will be up and running within a matter of hours or even less. This type of backup is the most expensive to operate.
Warm sites will have hardware connectivity already established on a smaller scale than the original production. They have backups on hand but may not be complete, maybe several days to a week old. An example would be backup tapes sent to the site by courier.
Full backup is the starting point for all other backups and contains all the data in the folders and files that have been selected to be backed up. Since full backup stores all files and folders frequent full backups result in faster, simpler restore operations and offer the best solution in data protection.
Differentials save the data input since the last full backup and has the advantage that a maximum of only two data sets are needed to restore the data. First you must perform a full backup, after that each differential backup made will contain all the changes since the last full backup.
Incremental backups make it more feasible to store backups from more points in time by organizing the data into increments of change between points in time. This eliminates the need to store duplicate copies of unchanged data. A full backup is made which serves as a reference point of an incremental backup set.
• Panda offers a free edition or paid versions which have trial offers.
• Norton offers paid versions with free trials.
• McAfee offers paid versions with 30 day free trials and free virus scan services.
• AVG offers free versions and paid versions with 30 day free trials.
• Kaspersky offers paid versions with 30 day free trials.
Trojan horse is a non-self-replicating type of malware which appears to perform a desirable function but instead drops a malicious payload, often including a backdoor allowing unauthorized access to the infected computer. They do not attempt to inject themselves into other files like a virus but may steal information and harm computers. They look like a sort of “social engineering” presenting themselves as harmless, useful gifts in order to persuade people to use them on their computers.
Drive by downloads are unintended downloads of computer software from the internet. This can be done in two different ways:
• Downloads which a person authorized but without understanding the consequences of the download. An example would be a download which installed an unknown executable program such as Active X or Java applet.
• Any download that happens without the person’s knowledge. This is often a computer virus, spyware, malware or crimeware. They may happen when visiting a website, viewing an email or clicking on a deceptive pop up window.
Malicious email attachments are deliberately drafted to cause problems on the server or the client. This could be due to the message containing a virus or the message being crafted in such a way as to take advantage of a weakness in the receiving mail client.