If you haven’t thought of any Christmas gift yet, consider teaching your old computer-illiterate grandma how to use computers. The ultimate goal is for her to send you a mail, but to reach there are a few important steps one must learn. Here are six steps I can think of.

eWeek had a great article/annoying slide show about the top 10 security risks that your users pose to your organization. One interesting thing I noted was with all of the increases in security (firewalls, IPS/IDS, NAC, password hardening, etc) in today’s organization, most of these are not even looked at.
Think about the easy of someone to walk out with their laptop and have it lost on the train (with not encryption)… Or someone with P2P software on their machine (that is sharing out their entire C drive)… Or worse yet, wifi (without separating it from the rest …read more

This should be a very short post as I have a fun contest starting on Monday here so we’ll keep it light and easy for now…
Below are a few simple ways to make sure your computer stays safe and secure for that much longer (they all eventually get messed up, even you Mac):

Run a software firewall (Windows XP comes with one built in, not too sure on the Mac OS front but I would imagine they have something).
Keep anti-virus software installed and up-to-date (AVG is free for the PC and ClamXav is free for the Mac).
Install a router. Make …read more