This Thursday, in case you didn’t know, Personal Firewall Day. I was pretty excited about the idea too until I realised there were no parades and opportunities to dress up. Still, it’s a great way of trying to persuade people that having a firewall in place on your computer is no longer a luxury, or something that nerdy types do. Everyone needs a firewall. ZoneLabs, who make probably the best (and free) firewall on the market, point out that
— Vast numbers of home and business computers are unprotected while on the Internet. In fact, many consumers upgraded to new computers over the holidays–they need to be quickly protected with the latest patches and security updates, or they’ll be vulnerable right out of the box.
— The FTC reports 9.9 million cases of identity theft in the U.S. last year, making it the fastest growing crime in America, affecting an estimated 500,000 to 700,000 people per year.
The bottom line is that it’s very easy to get infected — within seconds, literally, of connecting to the Internet — and it’s very hard to get uninfected. Future versions of WIndows — including the next XP ‘service pack’, which ships this year — will have a firewall activated by default, so this problem may not be around that long, but it pays to be safe.