Questions about security

I have been wanting to make my computer more secure lately, and have been wondering a few things about security. I use a cable modem, and am running windows 2000, and i also use IIS for some web development. So here goes the questions:

1) Firewall -- What is a good firewall to use? I don't want to use Zone Alarm because that always screws up IIS for some reason. Does anyone know of any good firewalls that would work good with running a very small website (mainly just for me) off of IIS? The files for the website are on a seperate NTFS partition.

2) Encryption -- Say I want to make sure that no one can get to some certain files, maybe source code or something. Well say that they get past the firewall or whatever, what would be a good way to encrypt my files so that even if they got to thm they could not use them? Or is there a way that I can hide them so that they won't even know that they are there? Is the encryption that you can do on a NTFS partition good?

3) Just how much can a hacker do -- If a hacker gets into my comp, can they really change flash BIOS settings, or format a hard drive, or delete or take any file that they want? How would they get through? Is there anything else i should do besides a firewall, and encrtpy/hide files and of course anti-virus software :D?

-- Thanks a lot! :):):D:D

Thank you mr. vb. I will try out some of your suggestions. BTW, anyone ever use PGP?

For encrypting i mean...

Yep, I always use PGP for encryption...PGPDisk is very good indeed!

I use it :) (See my sig)

make sure relevant permissions on IIS are as low as you can get them for your site to work, make sure no directories that are avalible to the outside user are set as executable!

and if you only use IIS for web dev, and never use it remote, set access to only local users, or only certain user groups.


si.

Thanks for the information. Simon, how do you set those permissions that you speak of?

thanks

What would be the best way to set up the IIS permissions so that i can develop some small things, but also let my friends be able to view them. And do this in the most secure way?