After I wrote about the latest stupid user security trick, several of my friends reminded me that one-third of my audience already knows how to secure their computers and did so, another third sort-of-knew how to secure their PCs and did it sometimes, and the remainder had never, wouldn’t now, and never would learn how to protect their computers. This article is for the people who manage that last third.

You see, if it was just Joe and his never-patched Windows XP PC at home who was getting into trouble, I wouldn’t mind. But, it’s not. All of us are stuck with the mess: having to clean up the litter of spam, malware, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that junks up our Internet highway. And, if you have a Joe in your office every time who causes mayhem every time he hooks into the office network over the virtual private network (VPN) or brings in a USB drive, he’s bringing his crap right into your network.

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