Do you remember when Mom told you that the best way to stay warm on a cold day is to use many layers of clothing? And do you remember the best cake you’ve ever had? For me, it was the layered wedding cake I ate over twenty-one years ago! And most of us remember that the best way to describe/categorize any given technology is to discuss it in the context of the seven layers of the OSI model.
In that vein, I would note that the best way to stay secure is to utilize a multi-layered defense. Part of any multi-layered defense must be the ability to re-direct access requests away from known threat sources. If you can bypass known trouble spots, you can avoid many problems.
With that sage advice in mind, I’ve decided to update my local “hosts” file to re-direct “known bad” destinations to my local (“good”) IP address. Specifically, I have implemented the hpHosts file as a means to maintain a comprehensive list of “known bad” destinations. The previous link describes the how-to’s necessary to implement a new hosts file using the hpHosts file. It’s fairly simple. Just make sure you shut down the DNS Client first, if you’re running Windows XP. Otherwise, you’ll run into some performance penalties.
-CyclingRoo-
Tags: layered security