Hack proof computer

Getting hacked will mean different things to different people. In all instances your are concerned about either a loss of an informaiton asset, its theft or its compromise.

I suggest that you look at your situation from a different perspective,what is it that you consider of value and how can you protect it.

Treat a hacking event just like any other disater and have a disaster recovery plan.

One of the challenges with information being compromised or stolen is knowing that the event has occured. I suggest turning on logs where the are available and then making the analysis of these logs part of your normal administrative routine, along with those regular backups.

If you have a firewall that's properly configured you shouldnot need a software firewall on individual workstation.

Proper configuration of the firewall is informed by an articulated security policy. If you don't have one, you won't know what is forbidden and what is allowed. This is work that must be developed with the assistance of the security dept. or with the business owners, ultimately, the amount of effort and dollars spent in security is measured against the consequences of the loss of assets.

Internal security measures, such as passwords, operating systems that have a security system, etc. go a long way in supporting your security measures.

Your biggest hacking threat is not from an outsider but from the knowledgable insider. The insider knows what is valueable and how to get at it.

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy, turn your computer off when you are not using it. Be careful with downloaded software, a trojan horse program can wake up find that cable modem connection and turn your PC into a Zombie.

I'm of the opinion that computer security is a matter of good precautions and common sense. Human beings are still the weakest link in the security chain.

Hope this is helpful.

Updates are not enough. A new warning was out today. There is so much you have to do, nobody can be expected to know all you need to make windows safe. You need to disable all activeX, disable all java, disable javascripts, disable scrap objects, even asx multimedia files can run programs on your PC. Refrain from using any Outlook because of the security risks, even pages loaded into IE can overflow your buffer and read your files. Some of these holes will let a person take over your computer. Check these for more:

http://www.securityfocus.com/bugtraq/archive
http://listserv.ntsecurity.net/archives/win2ksecadvice.html
http://listserv.ntsecurity.net/archives/win2ksecadvice.html

Is there such a thing as a hack-proof computer? No. But it appears you are seeking solutions for both your home PC, and your workstations/server at work. I have a very viable solution for you. As I am limited on characters here I have had to omit much from this answer (three times!)... so this causes me to cut some of the meat-out of it, so please email me and I would be happy to cut and paste some info on Windows Update and CNET Catchup you must know.
As to your firewall and antiviris queries, I too use ZoneAlarm at home on each of six PC's on a LAN behind a NAT hardware firewall. Your antivirus/firewall choices are both VERY solid choices even for redundancy behind a dedicated hardware/software solution at work on the desktops. You do not want to install two software firewalls as they will suck-up desktop resources and *attempt* to do the same task that ZoneAlarm does. Surf to http://www.zonelabs.com/pdf/ZA_Manual.pdf for the full manual. It is superbly adept at its job & Best-of-breed, and I have evalutated them all. To your 100% hack proof PC; well this is accomplished by "going back in time" before the hack occurred. Fault-tollerancy is what I am aiming at - and you don't want to scrimpt on dollars when it comes to this. I always go with a cloning solution, like mirroring but more with drives on a daily and weekly clone rotation - kind of like an offline RAID Level 0 setup if you will... I use this for workstations and servers alike. I use this at home with six PC's using Symantec's Ghost to clone my drives daily/weekly per PC. Thats three drives per PC - but a small price for peace of mind. I implented this same all-to-simple "hard disk cloning" solution for Hughes Aircraft Satellite Ground Systems four years ago, and they are still using it with 100% fault tolerancy - not 100% hacker-proof, but they aren't afraid to surf the web ;-) Feel free to email me for full info. Regards.

Secure VMS is a B2 compliant version of OpenVMS which is already a very secure operating system. I am a former Digital employee, and as of date I know of no penetrations to a Secure VMS system.

I've sent an email off to a contact that I havewith the US Software Security response team.

From here on - you may want to contact NSA.
There's lots of good sites out there.