Windows is an inherently insecure platform and significant risk to privacy. The manufacturer has devoted considerable time and effort to keeping track of what the user is doing and it's virtually impossible to run securely. Various Windows components and many third-party applications "phone home," exposing private data to outside sources.  There are numerous websites devoted to tracking vulnerabilities and exploits and new problems are reported all the time. There are hundreds of reports like this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/12/ms_patch_problems/.

We can perform hardening services for Windows machines including disabling risky and unnecessary services, tweaking systems settings, cleaning the program registry, and installing an application firewall to insure that your data stays on your machine.

We recommend a good hardware firewall or router for any machine not already protected within a LAN which also has a hardware firewall. These boxes are inexpensive while protecting against various forms of internet attacks.  We can select and install one for your environment. (DSL customers are typically ok in this regard as DSL routers offers some form of DOS protection and firewalling.)  We can run simple tests to insure that your data is not exposed.

If your PCs have reach end-of-life do you know how to dispose of them properly?  Deleting files or even formatting with OS-based tools is not sufficient to remove data from hard drives, USB keys, etc.  Depending on your needs, we can use specialized software to clean your disk drives to make it infeasible to recover your confidential information. In some cases, physical destruction of hard drives and other media (CDs, floppy disks, etc.) is necessary.