Last year I became fascinated with the rise and fall of the Storm Worm and in its wake a number of new super worms have emerged, the most recent being Conficker and Waledec.

It's not just the rate of infection and the speed by which they're able to spread, but the fact that these worms can be regarded as instant super computers. Out of nowhere they're able to harness the power of millions of computers and create the black market equivalent of the cloud computer providing on demand software as a service.

Worms often have an autonomy and sophistication that most other malware does not, inserting themselves into a system and disabling security software and the operating system's automatic updates.

It used to be that only Microsoft Windows systems were targetted but now too Apple systems are vulnerable, with a worm or two targeting OSX.

While it goes without saying that you should always be sure to run proper updates, and ensure your system is up to date, Microsoft does provide a free utility to identify and remove these worms.

One of the challenges however of these new breed of super worms is that detecting something that is otherwise invisible becomes quite a trick indeed. The advice I offer is to contemplate the use of a visual firewall that allows you to literally see what's going on within your network.

This can be done quite cheaply, using old hardware, and free software. There are a number of linux operating systems designed for just this purpose, including Coyote Linux and Devil Linux, and I add a utility like iptraf which makes it easy to see and control that network. Mind you there are better visualization tools than this, but I like to keep it simple.

While I do run Windows, I also took it upon myself long ago to learn Linux and other operating systems (like *BSD) so that I could make the most out of my computer hardware. When it comes to securing and controlling your home network it helps to have the knowledge and tools to do the job properly.

There are of course "easy" Linux systems like Ubuntu, which can get you started, but really there's no excuse for not giving it a shot. If you can run a Windows computer than you can run a Linux one. Got an old box kicking around the house? Why not give it a try...