Sunday Security Tip – Use A NAT Router
The internet is full of background noise. Worms, viruses, malicious code, and unsolicited junk are all floating around out there, looking for computers that will let them in, and they’ll never go away. When you plug your computer directly into the internet, you’re opening the door to all that background junk.
For broadband internet users, a basic NAT router is one of the best first lines of defense you can have in the battle to keep your computer secure. Even if you only have one computer in your home, I still, highly recommend purchasing a simple 4-port NAT router.
NAT routers create a LAN (Local Area Network) of multiple computers all sharing the same Public (External) IP address. The router provides each computer in the LAN with an Private (Internal) IP address that it uses to identify one computer from the next.
Every time you request something on the internet, like a web page, the NAT router makes a note of what it was and who requested it. So when that data comes back, the router knows who to send it to. When the router receives data that it can’t match to a request from its LAN, it simply discards it. NAT routers inherently provide firewall protection because they don’t let any data into the LAN that hasn’t specifically been asked for by one of the network’s computers. So all the unsolicited junk, spam, worms, viruses and other background noise gets thwarted at the router before it even reaches your computer.
For more in depth information on NAT Routers and how they keep you safe, I recommend listening to Security Now! episode #3 (NAT routers).
For Dial-Up users, a software firewall is still one of the best options. I recommend Kerio Personal Firewall as an excellent (and free) software firewall.