What Threat Level?

Despite the anecdotal evidence indicating that online threats are a legitimate menace, it’s a safe bet that most people don’t really take them seriously. In fact, it’s likely that your average home user doesn’t take any additional steps to maintain online protection beyond the installation of an antivirus program and keeping the Windows Firewall enabled. In a way, Microsoft recognized this by including Windows Defender, which protects against malicious and unwanted software, in later versions of its Windows operating system (see Figure 6.5).