Unit 2, Task 3 - P3

Unit 2, Task 3 – P3

Firewall

A firewall is a barrier with in a computer system that keeps out specific users and connections. Firewall is a program or a hardware device that filters the information coming through the internet connection and into your private network. This is how a firewall indicates whether or not the connection can come through, the filters will be flagged if it is at risk of getting hacked by unauthorised users.

Virus protection

Virus protection on computers is  a useful thing to have especially if using the internet on the computer. Viruses are caused by malicious code that is created by people.  When a virus is on a computer it attaches a specific programme in the computer and every time that programme runs it activates the virus and then the virus can multiply and attach to other programmes onto the computer. This can break your computer, and can also make documents and files in your computer disappear.  So virus protection programmes prevent unknown files into your computer and will prevent a virus. 

Clean up tools for cookies, internet history and defragmentation

On a computer you have something called cookies and internet history. Internet history is an entry of all the websites that you have visited on your computer, its basically memory of everything that you have done on a internet browser. Cookies are small files inside of the computer that download when you access a certain website, and then when you revisit that website your computer will check if it has a cookie that is relevant. If there is to many cookies and internet history it will start to slow down the speed of your computer. Clean up tools for these can be found on the internet browser itself and they are created to make your computer go at its max speed instead of it getting clogged up by useful cookies and internet history. There is also something called defragmentation and this is the process of reducing the amount of fragmentation and it does this by organising the content of the mass storage on a computer. This makes a larger space which means the files are stored in smaller fragments. This is useful as it also effects the speed of the computer.

Drive formatting

Drive formatting is the process of preparing a data storage device like a hard disk drive. Drive formatting may also create one or more file systems.  A hard drive is formatted to give it a logical structure that a computer and its operating system will understand. This makes the applications on a computer run on the hard disk.