Security discussion regarding hubs, firewalls, anti-virus and Vista Security

Security discussion

These are a very basic set of questions. Possibly there is an article on the web that someone can point me to that fully addresses each of these:

What security protection should I expect from:

a wireless hub/router

a software firewall

a software anti-virus, anti-trojan program

the security built into Vista


The reason I ask this is that I have a Linksys wireless hub with a WEP code activated and I also had Zonealarm with Windows XP. I had my files shared. I thought that the wireless hub should provide hardware based security from anyone being able to "look" at my files and anything behind the hub. I found that Zonealarm was giving me a lot of warnings of malware and other outside people finding me and trying to access my computer and that Zonealarm was stopping this. I don't understand the Linksys hub's capabilities well enough to not ask "why was the hub not keeping these outside intruders out?".

I now have Vista and the security it provides is suffocating. I have a hard time accessing my own files on other computers on my network and you need an ADVANCED IT degree to work around it. I would think that you could provide a secure "knock'em dead" firewall with a Linksys hub that would allow you to be "naked" behind the firewall so you did not have to deal with security at all once you were safe behind the Linksys firewall. I think this shows why I need to learn all I can so I don't leave my UAC off (which it is right now).

If the router is your internet gateway, it can provide hardware firewall protection via Network Address Translation (NAT). Basically when your computer hooks up to the router, you are assigned a private IP address. When your router hooks up with your internet service provider, it is assigned a public IP address. So the world sees your routers address and not your computers so it cannot directly communicate with it.

However, for hosting (web pages, VOIP servers etc.) purposes routers can be configured to forward 1 or more ports from your computer to the internet so folks outside could see your computer. I would check your router's firewall and port forwading settings.

The Linksys system I have is Linksys WRT54G

It provides the Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) Firewall, Internet Policy

So, the question is: What does that provide and it is capable of protecting me behind it?

Stateful Packet Inspection bascically ignores unsolicited packets. So, if someone tries to initaite contact with your machine, the router would not repsond or pass the packet through.

You would basically be protected from someone from the outside trying to come in if you firewall is configured correctly. Zone alarm stops unauthorized transmissions from your machine (spyware, zombies etc) as well as unauthorized incoming traffic.

Antivirus and UAC protect against differnt kind of threats (infected emails,
malicoius code execution from website, infected media etc.)

Long and short, computer security involves differnt layers and strategies to protect against all kinds of threats. Other things would be effective backups, anti spyware, prudent user habits and keeping software up to date.