Most who work in information security are familiar with the term layered security (also known as layered defense) which in a nutshell mean that you employ multiple solutions/components to protect your assets. This idea has been pushed at the enterprise level for years and has been significantly effective at deterring attacks. And with the latest advancements in the end-point-monitoring (EPM) solutions, enterprises now have the capability to both monitor and control what happens on all of the workstations in the environment.
But if you move away from enterprise security to securing the average home user, most users tend to rely solely on the anti-virus solutions. Now, I am not going to get into the debate over how effective or ineffective anti-virus solutions are – but if you are interested in reading rants over this topic feel free to do so. However, what I will say is that just having anti-virus software (especially now) definitely does not meet the layered security concept.
So, how do we get layered security for home computers? Well, the market is not shy from a variety of different solutions that will promise to compliment your existing anti-virus while providing you the benefit of added security. And in my opinion, some of these products can actually be beneficial such as malware, spyware, and email protection but most of these features are already built-in to latest anti-virus solutions – you may just not know it. So, the question still stands, how do we get layered security for home computers? Well, let me answer this by explaining a recent event where I had the opportunity to test a theory first hand…
azeemnow 