Your Daily Computer Security Tips

I often talk about the programs and methods you need to use to protect your computer on the Internet. But underlying all this is your trusty operating system that actually runs your stuff. When we say you have Windows XP or Vista, that is the operating system or OS. If you have a Mac, your operating system might be OS 10.4 Tiger, or the newer OS 10.5 Leopard. Both are part of the Mac OS X family of operating systems from Apple.

The OS is the engine that powers your computer. So today we are going back to basics, to make sure we know what sort of beastie it is, what it does for us, and of course how to care for it.

Your OS is a rather special program that runs on your PC. It is far longer and more complex than the other programs running on your machine. Essentially, it tells your hardware and software how to, well, operate! When you first turn on your computer, the machine looks at the hard drive and tries to find an operating system. If one is found (as is usually the case) the computer starts running it. This is what we call booting up. Then, after a minute or two, it produces the Desktop along with all those pretty icons. If no OS is found, you would just see an error message, or a flashing question mark on a Mac.

OK, your computer is up and running. You can create, open and manipulate files, connect to the Internet, etc. But note that you have not done any real work yet. To do that, you need additional programs that the OS will run for you. If you want to write a letter or do some accounting, you can load and run programs like MS Word or Excel. Of course, you have all your security programs running, such as the antivirus program and firewall. All these programs, or software, run “under” Windows or any other OS you may have, such as Linux or UNIX.

You can think of the OS as the manager which organizes and controls all these other programs, saves your work to disk, handles your files, and makes sure the various programs behave themselves (usually). Another important task the OS does is to manage your system resources. It assigns processor usage, memory and disk space as and when programs need them. On a PC, we loosely refer to the OS as Windows. That is the software that does all these wondrous things for us, without bothering us with the details.

Nowadays we demand operating systems that are flexible, serve many different purposes and are relatively easy for us to interact with. So most OS have become very complex. That is one of the reasons why flaws are regularly found in the Windows and Mac OS. Microsoft, publisher of Windows, releases fixes for its OS and other software on the second Tuesday of each month, called Patch Tuesday. However, emergency repairs can be issued at any time. Apple, the publisher of the Mac OS, releases fixes as soon as they are ready.

So whichever OS you have, be sure to keep it up to date, either manually yourself, or automatically. Note that you can no longer get updates for Windows 95, 98 or Me. If you are running one of these ancient OS while reading this, your computer is in danger of being infected with malware, hijacked or worse. Consider upgrading to a more modern system, uhh… quickly.

Syd Tash is a longtime computer security consultant, author, and founder of
The SaferSurfing Project. He has been keeping Web surfers like you safe and secure since the last century. Find out how to keep yourself safe online and do your part for a more secure Internet. Join the SaferSurfing Project here
=> http://SaferSurfingProject.com

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