The Dangers

The Internet is a dangerous place, it has been for some time and the dangers are only increasing.

Simply browsing the internet can now be enough to turn your computer into a zombie (a remotely controlled computer that has been compromised by hackers and used for their own nefarious purposes.)

You most likely will not even be aware that your computer has been hacked as the virus and Trojans of today are designed to operate secretly, silently and effectively.

If you maintain a website, it too is at risk of being hacked and then being used to spread infection to other computers.

Not only does this increase infection rates but you lose your customers' trust by infecting them when they come to visit!

E-mail itself has become even more dangerous with numbers approaching 75% of all e-mails received being spam (junk mail) and of those as much as 20% are virus laden or link to virus laden websites.

Attachments in e-mails are a major vector of infection mainly because users do not understand the process required to safely open an attached document.

But now e-mails themselves are getting hacked! Use of public domain e-mail services like Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail are now fraught with risks as well as creating a false sense of security as people rely on integrated antivirus software that may be out of date.

As if all that was not enough the very software you use to create documents (like Microsoft Word and Excel and Adobe PDF) themselves are now vectors of attack. Internet Explorer and other browsers you use to surf the web create weaknesses in your system that allow hackers to gain access to your computer.

In short, in today's internet world, nearly every software application, every e-mail; every website visited carries with it a nearly unacceptable risk.