Securing a Computer with BIOS

BIOS which stands for Basic Input Output System is though one of the most important part of a pc, it is normally overlooked when it comes to securing computer. BIOS helps boot your computer.  You may not have realized its importance as mostly all we want and care about is to reach desktop as soon as pc boots up. Securing your pc and data from unauthorized access is important if you have important personal or official data in your machine which you wouldn’t want to share with others. One way to protect it from others is to set a password on your account effectively preventing others from logging in. However, such type of protection is very basic and subjected to a number of other exploits.

The computers these days come equipped with Biometrics based authentication which normally authenticates you either using fingerprint scans, facial recognition or other ways. Even though this is effective, there are ways to circumvent this. A user can always make a bootable pen drive or boot your machine your Linux based live CD & therefore can easily access your confidential data.

To make this possible, one has to access BIOS and change the priority of bootable devices by setting pen drive or live CD as first bootable device. You can prevent this from happening if you set a user password on your BIOS. This will also add a layer of protection in your pc. A BIOS password will help if someone tries to access your BIOS and change order of boot device or make any other setting as BIOS will first authenticate the user before making any changes.

The only problem with this method is that you will have to remember your BIOS password otherwise it may lock you out if you happen to forget it. This is unlikely though but possible.

Posted in: PC Health,PC Tips,PCsecurity