Denial of Service attacks are attacks that have as a goal the disruption and disabling of IT services. Common DoS attacks lead to disruption or disabling of entire networks. Attackers often "flood" a network with unwanted traffic which leads to the network becoming overloaded with information. When this happens, legitimate users of the network are unable to connect to network resources, be they the internet, network printing or network storage. This obviously has implications for productivity and safety of information.

Hoaxes are another problem that affect the computing services of an organisation. These are the emails and websites that claim to be legitimate warnings of potential catastrophe just waiting to strike your PC or other IT resources. While they may not be spreading viruses, Hoaxes are more than just an annoyance. They prey on people's insecurities about the vulnerability of their computers and lead them to spread this paranoia. Often these hoaxes warn of a new deadly-to-your-PC virus and request the user to spread the information to everyone that they know. This in turn leads to lost productivity and unneccessary cluttering of email inboxes.

This is software that installs itself on your computer in the guise of a program that you intended to install. This spyware logs the user's computer activity, such as emails sent, websites accessed and more worryingly, forms filled out that may contain private information such as contact or credit card details. This information is then sent back to the originator of the program so that they can use these details for their own purposes.

Got a special geek or gamer on your gift list? Not only are these top picks for great gifts ideal, they will appeal even to those geeks and gamers over the age of 30.

Antivirus software is must-have protection. This review picks the best antivirus software based on its virus detection abilities, features, and breadth of protection. Whether you're seeking total system coverage or an ala carte solution, each of the following products provides superb virus protection for Windows-based PCs. Because every system is unique, evaluate several of these antivirus products to find the software best suited for your PC and your level of experience.

The Internet groups all of us into one big global neighborhood. In the interests of being a good neighbor - and keeping safe - these books should serve as required reading for anyone contemplating an online experience.

Those charged with or interested in enterprise computer security will want to stock their office bookshelf with these enterprise security books.

What is a boot sector? All disks and hard drives are divided into small sectors. The first sector is called the boot sector and contains the Master Boot Record (MBR). The MBR contains the information concerning the location of partitions on the drive and reading of the bootable operating system partition. During the bootup sequence on a DOS-based PC, the BIOS searches for certain system files, IO.SYS and MS-DOS.SYS. When those files have been located, the BIOS then searches for the first sector on that disk or drive and loads the needed Master Boot Record information into memory. The BIOS passes control to a program in the MBR which in turn loads IO.SYS. This latter file is responsible for loading the remainder of the operating system.

Today's viruses, worms, and Trojans often target your first line of defense, disabling your antivirus software and modifying the HOSTS file to prevent access to your antivirus vendor's website. And these same threats often block access to the Registry and Task Manager, making manual removal all the more difficult. Fortunately, with a little foresight, you can stymie these attempts to gain illicit control of your computer.