Computer security is taken very seriously at the majority of companies in the world today. So much so, that there are special departments in these companies that devote their time and resources to making sure that all of their internal data remains secure and out of the hands of malicious crackers or script kiddies just waiting to prove themselves as being 733T.

Now with more and more home computers connecting to the internet, crackers have found these computers easier to hack into especially the ones with "always on" broadband connections. For them and rightfully so, home computers are generally not secure.

From my personal experience, I have been in the computer field professionally for over 7 years and I still find it a little taxing staying abreast of all of the latest virus threats and security patches available at any given moment. There is just too much out there to watch out for especially if you are using Microsoft Windows with Outlook as your e-mail client. But even the patches need patching.

Case in point: America Online was recently alerted to the existence of a bug in their insanely popular instant messenger program AIM that enables intruders access to files residing on their users computers. Internet security group w00w00 has addressed the issue by releasing a fix for this vulerability but has also at the same time coded a backdoor into the program that could redirect users to porn sites or worse. Still feeling secure?

Another seemingly losing battle between security bugs and productivity is Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser where Microsoft is currently working on patching yet another flaw that could potentially give attackers access to the data found in your internet cookies or personal files that reside on your computer.

Or how about a new virus that has been created for the .NET operating system that is still in development at Microsoft?

And don't forget about the recently discovered virus that infects Macromedia Flash movies and infects your computer when the movie is played.

Ask any typical home computer user when was the last time they updated their system for new security patches or virus updates and see the reaction you get. I think you may be a little surprised.

I was hoping for a "What to do" sort of article but thats ok. Anyway about a month ago I was downloading pictures and video of cars off of morpheous and somehow got a self expanding script file. My system started to slow to a crawl and my hard drive was working overtime....the virus was ceaslessly copying and destroying every .jpg file I had on my 30GB HDD! Even my pron! hehe
All it took was the latest NAV patch but damn was that a costly mistake...watch your selves out there.