It seems like recently computers are more and more vulnerable to hacking, viruses, and even the people around the computer. Even with modern anti-virus software and firewalls, computers need the help of their users to keep them secure, down to simple things like password strength and restrictions. This article shows you how to secure your system, from protecting yourself from the outside to making it difficult to do anything on the inside.
1Set a password. Setting a password prompts the user to type in the specified secret "word" to log in. A password should be strong, don't set your password to your username, the word "password", or the name of your dog. Even something like "cornflakes21" is easy for a password breaker to guess. Try not to include any words in the dictionary. Instead, try using an acronym, such as your initials + all the digits of your birth date added together + random punctuation and letters throughout. So, if John M. Smith was born October 14, 1970, and he chose to include the characters A, j, and *, his password might be "JM*Sj23A".
- To add or change your password, go to “User Accounts” in the control panel.
- On your account, click the “Create a password for your account”.
- After setting your password it might prompt you to restrict your personal files to your user account, it would probably be wise to do so, and click “Create password” button.
2Restrict other user accounts. Set other user accounts to restricted so they cannot install programs or view other files without permission, or change important system settings. Do this to the accounts of anyone you believe does not know computers well or may cause harm to your system.
- To restrict other user accounts, go to user accounts in the control panel.
- On the user selected, change the account type to "Administrator".
3Install anti-virus software. It's important to have some protection for your computer against computer viruses. Without protection, your computer is extremely vulnerable to a virus attack.
4Install a firewall. This prevents people hacking into your system, and also prompts before programs attempt to make changes to your computer.
NOTE: This section is necessary to do all that is described in the description, however, they involve changing important system settings. Unless you are an advanced computer user, do not follow these steps in any way that differs from their description. Despite the strict necessity to follow them exactly as worded, they may be carried out in any order and any of the following are optional. For advanced users, you may change more settings in this area if you wish, and you may contribute if you have more knowledge about these settings.
1Set a BIOS password. A BIOS password will prompt the user to type in a password before even booting the system. This prevents any unwanted users from using your computer or changing settings in the BIOS. Enter the BIOS and find the option to set a password, set it to prompt for the password to do anything on the computer.
2Start gpedit.msc. Group Policies editor can be started by going to START>RUN>gpedit.msc, or, alternatively, typing it into the command line.
3Click on user configuration, and navigate to administrative templates.
4Disable the command prompt. Under system in user configuration, find "prevent access to the command prompt". Double click it, and select enable, and click "ok".
5Prevent access to the control panel. Under "Control Panel", find "prohibit access to the control panel", and enable it.
6Limit profile sizes. Under "system", "user profiles". Find "Limit profile size". Enable it, and set the limited size in kilobytes (for a gigabyte, type 10000, for 10 gigabytes, type 100000, etc.).
- gpedit can change many other things, such as forcing a Windows Classic or other visual style, forcing a classic start menu, preventing things from being opened, enabling or disabling help and error reporting, etc.
- A strong password doesn't always have to be made up. You can find random password generators with a search engine and use them to create a password.
- Don't overdo the gpedit settings. These settings can make a computer a prison very quickly.
- While using gpedit.msc, be careful! If you disable run, leave the command line enabled and vice versa! Otherwise, the settings you changed will be difficult to change!
- gpedit.msc is for the higher NT versions of Windows only (meaning for Windows 2000 and higher). This will not work on Windows 95, 98, NT 4, or ME.
- DO NOT use the example password on this page for anything. Anyone could try this password on any of your accounts for anything.
Categories: Internet Security
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