Chapter 3. Securing the Local Box
Meet Mr. Average. Running XP with some antivirus, he's blissfully covered. Then there's Jo Gadget who's wearing her Mac and believing the hype that the gloss is impermeable. And as for some Tux types, they're smug about Linux which, after all, never gets hacked.
Yes, I'm being sarcastic and generalizing horribly but what these stereotypical souls have in common is one of the greatest threats to security: complacency.
Whatever your system—and it may be a phone—whether or not you are right that it is safe today, what about tomorrow? What about the zero day?
In this chapter, we'll concentrate particularly but not exclusively on Windows because, after all, nine in ten of us use it. Nonetheless, the vouchsafe principles are one and the same across the board so, whatever your kit, listen up and adapt as need be. Coming up:
Security-centric OSes and running Windows virtually
Windows security services and the User Account Control
Proactive security with an almost perfect...