 Re: How to protect your business and private information?
I'm a fledgling tshirt guy, but I know my way around computer security, and your question touched on something that I think is largely misunderstood.
Your data isn't very likely to be compromised from the outside. Your data is likely to be compromised from the inside. Control physical access to your sensitive files and you'll have done most of the work already. In other words, don't allow employees who don't need it access to your Quickbooks (or whatever) file. Keep the "boss' computer" behind a password and don't give it out.
It's much easier for someone to walk up to your computer and copy files than it is to get in from the outside almost every time. Consider that you have a firewall in your OS (I'm guessing that you're running Windows) that tells you if a program is attempting to open a new port (common for "hacks"). If you have more than one computer connecting to the internet at a time then you probably have a router doing Network Address Translation, which obscures the addresses of the internal machines to the outside world (this is not a true security method, but more of a security-by-obscurity thing that, figured into the overall picture, helps immensely). Your router probably has its own firewall that, while redundant, has non-overlapping vulnerabilities with your OS firewall. You've already indicated that you're running antivirus software, and your concern about the topic leads me to think that you probably make sure that it's up to date. make sure it is.
Use Firefox (or Chrome, or Opera, or Safari) to browse the web instead of IE and you'll see another bit of tightening.
Mainly, make sure you control physical access to your computer. If your data is ever compromised, it's pretty much certain that your breach will come from within rather than from without, as long as you're taking the basic steps that you've already said that you are.
Oh, and back up. Do it a lot. 99.5% of viruses (that statistic is made up, but the real % is a very high number) don't install trojans that secretly send your data back to some black box in Turkmenistan - 99.5% of viruses just mess up your files and require a lot of time, headache and worry to remove. Good backups will save you a ton of time, headache and worry. | 
