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Let's explore 'The Security Center'

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CIOL Bureau
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In the last article I took you through the entire

installation process of

Windows XP SP2. I discussed in detail about the steps involved in installing

SP2 and how the operating system has changed after the booting. Today I will

give an exhaustive tour of the system to see how the user's experience will

change due to SP2.

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The first thing you will notice when the system starts is the

display of a warning message that the system is not secure. A red shield with a

cross icon appears on the task bar, and a small balloon appears over it. This

is a new behavior in SP2 and this is part of a feature known as “The Security

Center”.







Figure 1. Security Center.



































































































































































The Security Center monitors the state of three critical things.

They are “Firewall”, “Automatic Updates” and “Anti virus”. If any of these

settings are not enabled then the Security Center prompts the user when he logs

in. Let us see the options for the Security Center.



  • Firewall
    :

    This is the most critical feature needed for XP security. This blocks

    all incoming traffic which otherwise could cause enough harm to the user's

    workstation.


  • Automatic Updates
    :

    We saw earlier during setup that it prompted to turn on

    automatic updates. This monitors the setting of Automatic updates and displays

    information based on the user's setting. We will go into detail soon what the

    different options are.


  • Antivirus Scanner
    : Since an antivirus scanner is essential to prevent virus, it

    is also important that the antivirus scanner be up to date. Hence Security

    Center verifies if the antivirus scanner is installed and whether it is up to

    date.

If any of these settings are modified which could cause harm to

the computer then Security Center prompts the user on start up of the risks and

the consequences it can have to the system. This can be modified through a

setting. In Security Center, clicking on the link “Change the way Security

Center alerts me” displays the dialog box as seen below.







Figure 2: Turning off alerts for Security

Center.



Un-checking the boxes in the Alert Settings will not prompt the

user again when the computer boots up. This isn't the recommended choice

because a user might accidentally turn of one of these settings and he will not

be aware of it, because he will not be prompted at start up.

Now we will see what are the additional changes that SP2 has

introduced. Let us start with Control Panel. Opening Control Panel shows that

there are a lot of features added with SP2.







Figure 3. New icons have been added in

Control Panel.



The new features are Security Center, Windows Firewall and

Wireless Network Setup Wizard.

We discussed Security Center earlier and now let us discuss the

Windows Firewall. In earlier versions of the firewall it was just a turning

which had to be enabled or not. But this had a lot of disadvantages which could

not be customized for certain environments. For example, the firewall blindly

blocked all incoming traffic and didn't differentiate between the Internet and

the Local Area Network. As a result people had to learn how to disable the

firewall in the corporate network and use the firewall only if they connected

to the Internet on a stand alone computer. But now the firewall has been

enhanced and improved a lot in XP SP2.







Figure 4. The home screen of the firewall

in SP2.



If you observe the screen carefully, you will notice that there is

a big improvement from SP1 and it is no longer just a switch from turning it

off or turning it on. It has a lot of settings for different environments plus

it has included three additional tabs for advanced configuration.

The default page for the firewall is to turn the firewall off and

turn the firewall back on.

The “Don't allow exceptions” is for setting greater security to

the computer when the user is in a public network which are not secure by

default. These include hot spots in public places, airports etc because the

connection in these public places are not secure and hackers are always on the

prowl in these sensitive places and on the look out for computers that connect

to these networks to access sensitive data on them.







Figure 5. the Exception tab in the

firewall.



As mentioned earlier, in previous versions, the firewall blindly

blocked all the incoming traffic and couldn't differentiate between the local

area network and the internet. Hence this exception tab was included to exclude

some applications from using the firewall. Some programs like Instant

messengers, remote desktops, remote assistance and file/printer sharing need

the firewall to be excluded so that they can receive incoming data. But it is

important to note that the more programs configured to exclude the firewall,

the higher the risk to the computer. This is because when these programs are

functioning the firewall ignores the data that is received by these

applications. Hence it has to be used with care and only by trusted

applications..

This exception tab can be used to add additional programs or add

additional ports which need to be open so that certain programs can work.

Clicking on the “Add Program” button gives a list of programs which can be

added to the list of exceptions.







Figure 6. Add a program to the list of

exceptions.



Clicking on the “Change Scope” allows the program be accessed by a

scope of users. For example the first option “Any computer” means that the

program will be available to anyone on the Internet who accesses the computer

on which the program runs. The second option “My network (subnet) only” means

that the program will be accessible only within the network. And the last

option is to tweak the control so that particular users will be able to access

the program. The access is given to a list of IP Addresses.







Figure 7. Changing the scope of the

programs that have to bypass the firewall.



Clicking on “Add port” displays the dialog as seen below. This is

used when a specific port has to be opened so that other users can access your

computer.







Figure 8. Adding a port to the list of

exceptions.



The “Change scope” for the port is the same as that of the

programs which we discussed earlier.







Figure 9. Changing the scope of access for

the ports.









Figure 10. The advanced tab in the

firewall.



The advanced tab is used for advanced configuration by the

administrators who want to have more control over the firewall. It also has

features like Security Logging, ICMP and a setting to restore the firewall to

the default settings.

We have covered a lot today and saw how the firewall has been

revamped in SP2. In the next article we will cover the most important

application that is used by almost every user on the Internet and that is the

browser.



To be continued...

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