Internet Safety - Krebs’s 3 Basic Rules for Online Safety

From a security awareness perspective, these are indeed good and easy-to-follow guidelines for staying safe when using the Internet:

Internet Safety - Krebs’s 3 Basic Rules for Online Safety
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/05/krebss-3-basic-rules-for-online-safety/

QUOTE: Yes, I realize that’s an ambitious title for a blog post about staying secure online, but there are a handful of basic security principles that — if followed religiously — can blunt the majority of malicious threats out there today.

1. “If you didn’t go looking for it, don’t install it!” A great many online threats rely on tricking the user into taking some action — whether it be clicking an email link or attachment, or installing a custom browser plugin or application.

2. “If you installed it, update it.” Yes, keeping the operating system current with the latest patches is important, but maintaining a secure computer also requires care and feeding for the applications that run on top of the operating system. Bad guys are constantly attacking flaws in widely-installed software products

3. “If you no longer need it, remove it.” Clutter is the nemesis of a speedy computer. Unfortunately, many computer makers ship machines with gobs of bloatware that most customers never use even once. For example, Java is a powerful program and Web browser plugin that most people have on their machines but seldom use (the bulky program also adds itself to the startup menu in Windows every time you update it). Meanwhile, attackers are constantly targeting systems with outdated versions of this software.