When plugged into the internet, we can do anything that is in our scope. But truly, defining scope means to tell what we are capable of. So to say, there are guys who are capable to do terrible things out there. When they are plugged in, this can prove a lot hazardous or un-secure to a milder level.

There are two terms that are most obviously used for internet hazards – virus and hacker and these two may or may-not be inter-related. Defining virus as a logical bomb clearly describes that it will be some sort of tool and indirectly attacks our computer and damages it.

They may just spy the information and may be capable of crashing hardware to the BIOS (hardware) level. And hacker is a person who illegally gains access to a system and can interfere with sensitive information, which is quite undesirable.

Understanding bit of their functionality may enlighten us the importance of the precautions. When internet is connected, our computer uses ports to communicate with the outer world. These ports are the doorways through which our system security can be breeched.

First place is taken by firewalls, which are the major component of internet security. They reside between your computer and the outer world, and monitor each port and connection established with your computer. They deny the suspicious connections and close sensitive ports automatically, until they are actually needed. They can be installed as software, or in huge networks gateways have built-in firewalls that do the job in a similar ways.

Anti-Virus is a sort of offline security system that actively scans the running programs and processes and files accessed on the computer. They can check the viruses with their database, by looking-up its attributes, or a virus can be detected by its functional behavior.

So, it is best to adopt precautions before we face some undesirable incident that compels us to start installations and repairs from the scratch, causing a loss of precious time, data and money.

Additionally, there are many tools available for internet speed test.  These tools help to speed up internet and measure the upload and download links. They will provide you the exact stats of your internet connection and bandwidth.