Tools for Improving Computer Security In this assignment, you will identify a ba
ID: 3822716 • Letter: T
Question
Tools for Improving Computer Security
In this assignment, you will identify a baseline of security on your own computer and explore how it can be improved.
This week focuses on administrative security. Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh (Mac) offer tools to allow you to better manage the security on a home computer.
Click here to visit the website related to Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA) and download MBSA.
Run MBSA on your computer. Create a Microsoft Word document sharing the results of the scan on your computer and submit it to the Discussion Area.
Respond to the following after you have completed the MBSA analysis:
What are the biggest threats to a personal computer (PC)? Justify your answer. Have any of these threats been detected on your machine?
Why is virus protection so important on a PC? How does spyware compare to viruses as a threat to your personal information? Explain your reasoning.
What steps can be taken to make your PC more secure? Outline at least two steps. What areas of security do these steps address?
Run the test again with any corrections to the system to resolve the identified problems and explain the steps you took to improve security on your system.
If you are using a Mac instead of a PC, you will need to identify a vulnerability scanner that works with your version of Mac OS. One example of this type of tool repository can be found at: http://sectools.org/tag/vuln-scanners
Determine the security updates that apply to your computer. Compile a list of security updates for your computer and provide a summary of the vulnerabilities they prevent from being exploited. Provide a summary of the course of action you have taken to secure your computer. If your computer is up-to-date in terms of Mac recommended patches, choose three of the optional enhancements that would apply to your operating system (OS) version and summarize why they would be beneficial.
Respond to the following as part of the discussion as well:
What are the biggest threats to a PC and Mac? Are they significantly different? Explain your answer using examples.
Why is virus protection important on a Mac? How does spyware compare to viruses as a threat to your personal information? Explain your reasoning.
What steps can be taken to make your computer more secure? Outline at least two steps. What areas of security do these steps address?
Explanation / Answer
A) The biggest threats to the personal computers are vulnarabilities in softwares, spam mails, malware and phishing. These are generally come from the internet except vulanarabilities in software , these vulnarabilities comes with the softwares installed in the system. Generally vulnarabilities will be seen in unlicenced softwares. Spam mails , malware will come from internet when the system is in online. These causes big threat to the personal data in the system. Phishing is the done by the hackers which they will enter into our system without knowing us and access of bank accounts information or sensitive information from our computer. They will enter our system by sending spam mails and malwares to our system first. When we click on the spam mails they will get the access to our system.
A) If there is no protection to our personal computer then it will cakewalk to the hackers to enter into the system and do whatever they want. Not only hackers because of virus and malware our computer system is also get effected and the performance will be gradually decrease. In order to avoid this we must maintain antivirus in our system.
A virus is just the bad software which runs in our system and effects the system performance. But the spyware is a big threat because it monitors what you are doing in the system and sends that data to the hacker. Every mouse click you do the hacker can know what you are doing in the system.
A) In order to maintain our PC more secure we need to maintain good antivirus and internet security software. These softwares make our personal computer will work normally and it blocks all types of malwares, softwares etc. So that our system and our personal data both will be safe.