In today's world among computer users, security stands as a major issue. The major security issues are virus, email, spam and hacker attacks. In this paper I will be discussing on the basic measure, which a non-computer professional can adopt without much cost against attacks. As this is an article for non-technical people I'm trying to avoid the technical words to the maximum, which we techies use.

Hacker - Whoz it ?
A hacker is a person who gets into other's systems without their permission or concern and knows about computer in depth ie the way in which an application works. They are really very very intelligent people who know how the things work in a computer. They have their own way of doing things and want to try every operation in the system in a different way from normal operations. They try this out by trial & error method and finds new things, which they will like to share with others. I never say that all hackers are good.
Hackers are of two types good & bad .All I was telling till now was about the good guys. Now let me tell u about the bad guys. I never want to call these bad guys as hackers; instead I would like to call these people as Crackers or Intruders. Crackers or Intruders get it other people's machines or servers and cause destruction like deletion of data and other actions, which ultimately may lead to the system crash. So this is really bad and not appreciated at all. A hacker also get into other's machine, they never causes destruction or damage to the machine into which they get into but instead they report the vulnerabilities or the loop hole to the concerned person and measures to prevent it. A good Hacker always feels free to share his knowledge with others in the net. After saying all this I must say that a Hacker whether he is good or bad get into other's systems without their permission and only a very few people can remain as good hackers.

How Can Security be achieved?
Though nobody can give u a assurance that your system is 100% secure against attacks. We can try our best to make our system secure to the most. Some of the effective measures are good password practices, effective management of e-mails & downloads, managed installation of screen savers, wallpapers and software.

How does and e-mail Account works?
Passwords are an important factor regarding the security. Whenever you try to check mails your mail the computer (the web site) will ask for your user-id and password. User-id and password are the two ways by which the computer can identify you. You'll be able to log in to the e-mail account only if your user-id and password matches ie the computer into which you try to log in has your user-id and password in a place called database. After entering your user-id and password in the respective places when you click on the sigin button the computer (web server) verifies your password and user-id, if your user-id and password matches with the one which is their in the database (which I discussed earlier) you will be able to get into the account and reach your inbox else the computer will prompt you to enter the user-id & password .So there are two things user-id and the password.

Good Password Practices:
Anybody who knows your name can easily find your e-mail ID.So what is relevant or important to us is the password. How can we make our password secure?. The answer
is not very simple. The best method is to follow good combinations.ie when u make a password you should use letters, numbers and special characters. A secure password is one, which is difficult to guess and obviously will be hard to remember also. When you create a password try to follow the following guidelines.

 A password should be have a minimum of 8 characters
 A password must have letters, numbers and special characters.
 Try to change the password once in 30 days.
 Don't use dictionary words as passwords.

So now the problem will be how to remember the password once you create it using the above guidelines. Always try to make a password, which means something to you and not to others for eg. The first letter of your name the second can be the last digit of your house number etc. Always try to remember and not to write it down. Never ever save your password in a file on your computer.

E-Mail Threat:
In the present world e-mail has become an important medium for communication, hence cyber criminals use email as an important medium for communication. Many people use outlook for managing their emails. Unidentified emails can cause threat to the machines in different ways. Some of them are
Virus:
Viruses are programs written by hackers. it can cause damage to the system in several ways, and how it affects depends on the code(program) written for it .
Spam:
Spam affects the inbox of your e-mail account. When affected what it does is it floods your inbox with unwanted or rubbish mails with the same mail repeating hundreds of times. Finally your mail server gets overloaded and collapses and slowly stops functioning.
Scams:
These are e-mails which ask for your password, credit card number etc.to make it look like genuine in the "from" address place it will display a trusted mail address.

A possible way of an e-mail attack
When connected to the internet, as outlook is automatically configured it will pull all your email to your machine and you will be checking it one by one, there lies a trap!., you will find an email with an interesting subject and you will be curious to open it. As soon as u open it sometimes you won't find any thing special but in the background something is going on seriously,ie the virus which is already running in your system will be sending e-mails to every person in your address book .So others will be getting these emails in your address. Another instance is an email with an attachment like a screen saver or wallpaper or an exe file which you will download and double-click to install, which makes your monitor flicker and finally a blank screen appears and you will try reboot your machine and you won't be able to do it since your files will be destroyed. What I told is only two possible ways and there are several other possible ways by which unidentified mails can affect your machine.

Counter-measures for email threat:
Never open an unidentified e-mail. Delete it as soon as you see it in inbox.
Before opening an e-mail make sure that it is from a trusted source.
Before opening e-mail read the subject line and if you find the subject to be suspicious or if it doesn't make any sense to you, it is better you delete the mail.
If an attachment in an email is found to be suspicious, delete the mail.
Never give your password or credit card number in e-mails if somebody asks for. No genuine business deal will ask for your password or credit card number through e-mails.
Give your credit card number in a trusted secure site only.
Never download and run any files from Internet that is not from a trusted source.
If possible buy Anti Virus software and install it in your computer. I would recommend for Norton Anti virus from Symantec Corporation, which is a good Anti Virus available in the market. Norton has the capability to scan the incoming and outgoing mails.

Chat Rooms:
Chat and Chat Rooms are becoming popular now a day and more people are interested in chatting in the internet, while chatting you should be careful about certain things. First of all let me tell you that it is not safe to chat with strangers in the internet. Never include a person in your contact list who is not familiar to you, or after adding a person to your contact list and after sometimes if you find him to be suspicious delete that contact. Never give your password or credit card number or other confidential information while chatting. While chatting in chat rooms I recommend you not to disclose your identity, which means you should not use your real names in the chat rooms.

Virus Attack:
A virus can cause threat to your machine in several ways. One possible way is through e-mails, which we discussed earlier. A virus can enter your machine through a file, which you copied, from another machine through a floppy disc or a CD-Rom. As I told earlier the behavior of the virus depends on the code (program) written for it. So virus will delete your system files or documents and some others will not cause any damage to the files but will continue to multiply to hundreds and thousands reducing the free space on Hard Disk, so it depends.

Counter measure for virus attacks:
The most effective measure is to install a Anti Virus Package like Norton which is available from the market. Try to keep your Anti Virus updated. Almost all Anti Virus has the facility to update it from the internet. Never run unwanted files or suspicious files in your computer. See that the auto protect facility of your Anti Virus is enabled or on so that when you copy a file from another machine to your machine or run a file in your machine the Anti Virus software can scan for virus. Schedule for whole system virus scan atleast once in 15 days.For more information you can visit the URL:
www.symantec.com

Personal Firewall:
A Firewall is something that monitors any attempts by an outsider to enter into our computer. A firewall can be either hardware or software. The firewall monitors each and every request and based on a defined set of rule either grants or denies the access for the request. There are several personal firewalls available in the market; even a free firewall is available .You can download it from the following URL:
www.zonelabs.com

Security is something that varies. As I said earlier nobody can say that a system is 100% secure from attacks, all we can do is try our best to make our system the most secure with the available resources. I think this article can help you to implement security features in your system to a certain extent without much cost.