In the last section I gave a tour of the installation process of Windows XP SP2. I discussed in detail about the steps involved in installing SP2 and how the operating system has changed after the booting. Today I will give an exhaustive tour of the system to see how the user’s experience will change due to SP2.
The first thing you will notice when the system starts is the display of a warning message that the system is not secure. A red shield with a cross icon appears on the task bar, and a small balloon appears over it. This is a new behaviour in SP2 and this is part of a feature known as “the Security Center”.
Figure 1. Security Center.
The Security Center monitors the state of three critical things. They are “Firewall”, “Automatic Updates” and “Anti virus”. If any of these settings are not enabled then the Security Center prompts the user when he logs in. Let us see the options for the Security Center.
If any of these settings are modified which could cause harm to the computer then Security Center prompts the user on start up of the risks and the consequences it can have to the system. This can be modified through a setting. In Security Center, clicking on the link “Change the way Security Center alerts me” displays the dialog box as seen below.
Figure 2: Turning off alerts for Security Center.
Un-checking the boxes in the Alert Settings will not prompt the user again when the computer boots up. This isn’t the recommended choice because a user might accidentally turn of one of these settings and he will not be aware of it, because he will not be prompted at start up.
Now we will see what are the additional changes that SP2 has introduced. Let us start with Control Panel. Opening Control Panel shows that there are a lot of features added with SP2.
Figure 3. New icons have been added in Control Panel.
The new features are Security Center, Windows Firewall and Wireless Network Setup Wizard.
We discussed Security Center earlier and now let us discuss the Windows Firewall. In earlier versions of the firewall it was just a turning which had to be enabled or not. But this had a lot of disadvantages which could not be customized for certain environments. For example, the firewall blindly blocked all incoming traffic and didn’t differentiate between the Internet and the Local Area Network. As a result people had to learn how to disable the firewall in the corporate network and use the firewall only if they connected to the Internet on a stand alone computer. But now the firewall has been enhanced and improved a lot in XP SP2.
Figure 4. The home screen of the firewall in SP2.
If you observe the screen carefully, you will notice that there is a big improvement from SP1 and it is no longer just a switch from turning it off or turning it on. It has a lot of settings for different environments plus it has included three additional tabs for advanced configuration.
The default page for the firewall is to turn the firewall off and turn the firewall back on.
The “Don’t allow exceptions” is for setting greater security to the computer when the user is in a public network which are not secure by default. These include hot spots in public places, airports etc because the connection in these public places are not secure and hackers are always on the prowl in these sensitive places and on the look out for computers that connect to these networks to access sensitive data on them.
Figure 5. the Exception tab in the firewall.
As mentioned earlier, in previous versions, the firewall blindly blocked all the incoming traffic and couldn’t differentiate between the local area network and the internet. Hence this exception tab was included to exclude some applications from using the firewall. Some programs like Instant messengers, remote desktops, remote assistance and file/printer sharing need the firewall to be excluded so that they can receive incoming data. But it is important to note that the more programs configured to exclude the firewall, the higher the risk to the computer. This is because when these programs are functioning the firewall ignores the data that is received by these applications. Hence it has to be used with care and only by trusted applications..
This exception tab can be used to add additional programs or add additional ports which need to be open so that certain programs can work. Clicking on the “Add Program” button gives a list of programs which can be added to the list of exceptions.
Figure 6. Add a program to the list of exceptions.
Clicking on the “Change Scope” allows the program be accessed by a scope of users. For example the first option “Any computer” means that the program will be available to anyone on the Internet who accesses the computer on which the program runs. The second option “My network (subnet) only” means that the program will be accessible only within the network. And the last option is to tweak the control so that particular users will be able to access the program. The access is given to a list of IP Addresses.
Figure 7. Changing the scope of the programs that have to bypass the firewall.
Clicking on “Add port” displays the dialog as seen below. This is used when a specific port has to be opened so that other users can access your computer.
Figure 8. Adding a port to the list of exceptions.
The “Change scope” for the port is the same as that of the programs which we discussed earlier.
Figure 9. Changing the scope of access for the ports.
Figure 10. The advanced tab in the firewall.
The advanced tab is used for advanced configuration by the administrators who want to have more control over the firewall. It also has features like Security Logging, ICMP and a setting to restore the firewall to the default settings.
We have covered a lot today and saw how the firewall has been revamped in SP2. In the next article we will cover the most important application that is used by almost every user on the Internet and that is the browser.
To be continued...