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Whether you are trying to secure a mainframe computer or a Pocket PC, the
ideas involved in securing your computer from the network are very similar.
As the old saying goes, the only truly secure computer is one that has the
power turned off and is disconnected from all networks. Obviously, we don't
want to go that far in securing our computers as it tends to make them
less useful.
The keys to computer security are vigilance and balance. You need to be vigilant
and ensure that you do all of the good security things like:
- Disable all unnecessary services running on the machine
- Rethink all services again and try to eliminate more
- Properly configure all of the services you decided you really do need
- Install all security patches for all software installed
- Update all security patches on a frequent regular basis
- Tightly control permission to access both the machine and files
- Use secure protocols when accessing the machine
- Ensure that the machine is physically secure
- Ensure that those who access the system choose good passwords
You also need balance: making the computer secure by disabling all logins may make the machine more secure, but it does slightly inconvenience the people who need
to use the machine.
Although the ideas may be the same, how you actually perform these actions varies
greatly from one type of operating system to another. For that reason, we've included
links below based on the operating system. If you click on multiple pages in each
group, you will notice that many of the things will be the same, but as there may be
small differences for each operating system, we have separated them as we think will
be of the most benefit.
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