Unified Diff

Have you ever been the victim of a computer virus, worm, or other malicious software program? If so, then you understand what a pain it is to recover. Often times, the only way to fix the problems is to do a clean re-install of Windows. Of course you can buy anti-virus and anit-spyware products, but these programs are all meant for after-the-fact. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to stop malicious software (malware) in its tracks before damage is done?

Enter the “least privilege” security model. This approach to computing is very simple — only give yourself enough privileges to accomplish the task you need to perform. For example: do you need to be able to delete all of your system files while you write a letter in Microsoft Word? The answer would be “no, of course not!” But running with full privileges, you would be able to do so.

Whenever something goes wrong with our computers, we are always quick to assume that it’s a virus or spyware that’s to blame. This might have to do with the fact that they’re the most common computer problems. But what I find to be the single biggest computer problem is user ignorance.