19. Vulnerability
An important step in protecting your computer against malicious persons and applications is to keep up to date the operating system and the applications you regularly use. Moreover, to prevent unauthorized physical access to your computer, strong passwords (passwords that cannot be easily guessed) must be configured for each Windows user account.
SHIELD DELUXE 2013 regularly checks your system for vulnerabilities and notifies you about the existing issues.
19.1. Checking for Vulnerabilities
You can check for vulnerabilities and fix them step by step by using the Vulnerability
Scan wizard. To start the wizard, open SHIELD DELUXE 2013 and, depending on the user interface view mode, proceed as follows:
Intermediate View
Go to the Security tab and click Vulnerability Scan in the Quick Tasks area on the left side of the window.
Expert View
Go to Vulnerability > Status and click Check Now.
Follow the six-step guided procedure to remove vulnerabilities from your system. You can navigate through the wizard using the Next button. To exit the wizard, click Cancel.
1. Protect your PC
Select vulnerabilities to check.
2. Scan selected issues...
Wait for SHIELD DELUXE 2013 to finish checking your system for vulnerabilities.
3. Windows Updates
You can see the list of critical and non-critical Windows updates that are not currently installed on your computer. Select the updates you want to install.
4. Application Updates
If an application is not up to date, click the provided link to download the latest version.
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5. Weak Passwords
You can see the list of the Windows user accounts configured on your computer and the level of protection their password provides. Click Fix to modify the weak passwords.
6. Summary
This is where you can view the operation result.
19.2. Status
To see the current vulnerability status and enable/disable automatic vulnerability scanning, follow these steps:
1. Open SHIELD DELUXE 2013, click Options in the upper-right corner of the window and choose Expert View.
2. Go to Vulnerability > Status.
The table displays the issues covered in the last vulnerability check and their status.
You can see the action you have to take to fix each vulnerability, if any. If the action is None, then the respective issue does not represent a vulnerability.
Important
To be automatically notified about system or application vulnerabilities, keep the
Automatic Vulnerability Scanning enabled.
Depending on the issue, to fix a specific vulnerability proceed as follows:
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If Windows updates are available, click Install in the Action column to install them.
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If an application is outdated, click More info to view version information and find a link to the vendor web page from where you can install the latest version of that application.
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If a Windows user account has a weak password, click View & Fix to force the user to change the password at the next logon or change the password yourself. For a strong password, use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters (such as #, $ or @).
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If the Media Autorun feature is enabled in Windows, click Fix to disable it.
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19.3. Settings
To configure the settings of the automatic vulnerability checking, follow these steps:
1. Open SHIELD DELUXE 2013, click Options in the upper-right corner of the window and choose Expert View.
2. Go to Vulnerability > Settings.
3. Select the check boxes corresponding to the system vulnerabilities you want to be regularly checked.
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Critical Windows Updates
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Regular Windows Updates
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Application Updates
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Weak Passwords
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Media Autorun
Note
If you clear the check box corresponding to a specific vulnerability, SHIELD DELUXE
2013 will no longer notify you about the related issues.
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