4. Use proper antivirus software. There are thousands of new strains of viruses and computer worms released each year. The best thing you can do to prevent infection from these deadly strains, is to use proper antivirus software. There are a lot of good antivirus software manufacturers that you can choose from, like Symantec, McAfee, Kaspersky Labs, etc. - just to mention a few; it is recommended to download trial versions of such antivirus software, and try them in order to choose what fits you best in terms of handling, ease of use and also price. If it is the price you are all about, you may want to check Avira - this antivirus software has a free version for personal use and its quite appealing. Make sure your antivirus is continuously updated, and acquire the needed update subscriptions to keep it updated without interruptions, in order to prevent infections from new virus and worms strains released. Please note though that you cannot have two antivirus programs installed at once; it is highly recommended to uninstall older antivirus software from your computer before deploying a new one.

5. Use anti-spyware programs. If your antivirus does not contain anti-spyware tools, and even if it does, it is highly recommended to use additional anti-spyware software. These programs work in a similar fashion as antivirus ones, they have a background monitor and also a scanner that you can choose to use and scan your computer for known adware and spyware programs. Windows Defender and SpyBot are just a couple examples of useful programs that you may want to check out.

6. Use an additional firewall/router to protect your network and/or computer from Internet attacks. In most cases, your computer will either be part of no network (a home computer for example), or part of a small home or business network. A home computer may usually be directly connected to the Internet, through a modem. In such cases, you can insert an additional firewall device in between the local computer or local network, and the Internet. This device can be either a firewall/router appliance or a server configured as firewall. There are various firewall appliance that you can purchase for this purpose, from well known manufacturers like Linksys or USRobotics for example, and such devices are indeed affordable today. As an alternative, if you have an older computer around, you can configure it to run as firewall using a free dedicated operating system for this purpose, like Monowall for example. Please note that you will need basic network configuration skills at least, to be able to configure your network and to use an additional firewall. In any case, by inserting this additional hardware firewall in between you and the Internet, you are significantly increasing protection against Internet-based attacks.

7. Use a startup monitor program to monitor new programs installed that auto-run at startup. A good example of this type is WinPatrol that will monitor any new startup registry additions and will prompt you whether to allow or not, these additions to remain saved in your computer's registry. This is important because adware/spyware programs usually insert startup commands for themselves inside startup registry keys, and in this fashion the adware/spyware program will be automatically re-launched at each computer startup.

8. In order to check your system for possible vulnerabilities and exploitable ports, use online security check tools like the ones provided by Symantec or Trend Micro. Such systems will usually perform a port scan on your computer, looking for open ports based on default port assignment, in order to identify running services and to inform the user about open ports found, assigned services and security implications. Some of these tools will also perform an antivirus scan on the local computer; in such cases an ActiveX control will have to be downloaded from the remote site and installed on your computer, so you need to verify whether the ActiveX control is signed properly and matches the name of the company providing the security check, and make sure that you can trust them. Never perform such tests on websites that are not proven to belong to trustworthy companies.

9. If you are not running file and printer sharing for Windows Network, in other words if you do not use a local Windows based network to share files and printers with other local computes, then you should disable NetBIOS on your local computer. You can disable the NetBIOS service from Control Panel - Administrative Tools – Services.