Protecting Me

In this column, we give a quick overview of the many lines of protection you find on a typical home machine, which in turn helps us illustrate the complexity and challenges involved in securing a standard computer system. We focus on Windows here simply because it´s widespread and widely attacked; many of the same techniques can be found on other platforms. As such, if you´re a Unix user or a Mac lover, or even if you do all your work on a tablet, these techniques-and others that are very similar to them-can be found on your device, even if their presence isn´t immediately obvious in the user interface. To be clear, we´re using Windows as an example, but it isn´t unique in its multifaceted protection mechanisms.