There are basically 4 different type of measures that you need to take to protect yourself and your computer from hostile actions.

1  Anti Virus - You should always have an Up-To-Date Anti Virus program on your computer. Even if you never connect to the internet. Granted the risk is minimized if no internet connection is there, but in the beginning there were viruses and back then there was no internet. Viruses today for the most part like to use the internet as a means of mass infection fast before the anti virus programs are aware of their activity.

2  Firewalls - Since most home computers today utilize the internet, after all that was one of the justifications, a firewall is a primary component.

3  Spyware - While anti virus programs and firewalls have been around for a long time, a newbie to the seen is the Spyware Program. Spyware is more of an invasion problem of un-solicited software that installs without you knowing it.

4   OS Updates - With the rush to market of Operating Systems, especially Windows which so happens to be on about 95% of all desktop systems, security flaws are identified years after the OS has been introduced.

Ace In The Hole - Backups .... Now there is a greater reason for a backup that will effect you more times than not is that you will have a hardware failure. Remember it is not if a hard drive crashes, but when. In the beginning for the most part, backups were aimed at businesses primarly because of the data lost was production lost and that meant a lot of money. With the recent surge of digital cameras as a example, personnal memories are now stored on your computer. In the print days, there was always the negatives to fall back on. No More. Pictures are downloded, then the camera is erased and the process is started over. Some viruses have been know to format a hard drive, but more than likely it will be hardware failure of the hard drive. It good to have a duplicate stored somewhere at least for peace of mind.