Windows 7 is a lot of good things. It’s certainly better, for example, than Windows 7. But, and this is important, Windows 7 is no more secure than any of its predecessors. Here are the basics of what you need to do to make sure that Windows 7 is as secure as it can be.

First, you almost certainly won’t need to buy a firewall program. Windows’ built-in firewall has worked well over the last several versions. The new Windows 7 Firewall is better than what we have in the past though.

You can now manage all of your firewall settings, not just the basic ones as you could with Vista via the control panel applet. Windows 7 also now comes with three firewall profiles: Public network, home network or work network. The home network setting is for the use of Windows 7’s new take on home peer-to-peer networking: the HomeGroup.

The combination of Windows 7 firewall and HomeGroup makes for a safe and useful home network. It’s only real problem is that HomeGroup networking only works with Windows 7 PCs. XP, Vista, Mac, Linux, etc. just won’t work with it.

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