Protecting the Windows Virtual Machine

The Windows world is a dangerous place. There are millions of viruses waiting to attack your Windows environment and not many fewer hackers who would love to access your Windows environment to accomplish their dirty deeds. As soon as you connect your Windows environment to a network and the Internet, you need to protect it as much as you can. Protecting the Windows environment is also important because you'll need to do that to protect your Mac OS X environment, too.

Because this is such an important topic and is done the same way whether you run Windows via Boot Camp or via Parallels Desktop for Mac, I've devoted Chapter 4, "Protecting Your Windows Environment from Internet Attacks," to this topic. Read that chapter and accomplish the tasks recommended there to protect your virtual Windows environment from attacks. At the least, you need to install an antivirus application. You should also protect your virtual machine from hacking and spyware/adware as well.