My mom read through my handout for BYU Women's conference.  I had to edit my previous post to make it a little easier to understand.  ENJOY!

What is an Operating System?  Think of the Operating system as the different systems in your house: Electrical System and Plumbing. They all provide services to all of the rooms in your house (kitchen, bedrooms, living room)

Example Operating Systems that you may be familiar with:

Windows (Bill Gates): XP, Vista, Windows 7

Apple (Steve Jobs) Mac OS – Lion, Snow Leapord, etc

What is an Application? – An application interacts directly with the user and performs a function or purpose.  Just like the analogy above, as a homeowner, I interact directly with the various rooms in my house.  The rooms are different; each has a different purpose just like applications. I benefit from the electrical, plumbing systems, but I do not (Heavens NO!!) change or interact directly with our electrical or plumbing systems.

Since being a homeowner, there is one thing that you dread and try to avoid – WATER DAMAGE.  Water can sneak into the smallest crack in a house foundation.  Or what about a pipe that has gone out? More WATER DAMAGE!!

So, in our computer world there are cracks in our operating system. Vulnerabilities! Vulnerability: a security weakness that could be exploited by a virus or hacker.  By exploiting the vulnerability, they could hack into your computer.

What!!! Someone could break into my computer!? Yes!  That is why the Internet relates well to rain water.   (If not properly protected) It can be an onslaught of malware that could potentially damage your computer or steal personal information.  Think of a huge rainstorm and huge puddles around your house.  Don’t you get a little nervous?!

So how do I protect my computer?

INSTALL ALL RECOMMENDED OPERATING SYSTEM UPDATES

RESTART YOUR COMPUTER AFTER INSTALLING THE UPDATES!!

The updates are not effective if you don’t restart your computer.  Don’t ignore the reminders.  Take the time immediately and install the updates and restart the computer while you are thinking about it!

Enable automatic updates in Windows 7

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3diwDOfEdPs

Windows XP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7qqKEhBM7k

Mac:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y26vBQecp4M

INSTALL RECOMMENDED APPLICATION UPDATES

It’s usually at the most inconvenient moment, but if you see an update available for any application that you have installed INSTALL them. (Example applications: Adobe Acrobat Reader, Safari, Internet Explorer, iTunes). An onslaught of viruses and spyware has been created to attack old versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader (Adobe Reader – Popular software to publish and read pdf documents).

INSTALL ANY RECOMMENDED UPDATES OF APPLICATIONS THAT YOU HAVE INSTALLED!!

Application Security Home Computer Security Security Awareness