The campaign features a Web site hosted by TruSecure, the Virginia-based security company whose employee first came up with the idea for a consumer-oriented security day. The Web site sports vendor-neutral advice for home PC users on how to secure their systems.

"If it becomes a perception that the Internet is a dangerous place to walk at night, that hurts us all," said Fred Felman, vice president of marketing for security software maker Zone Labs, which is a supporter of Personal Firewall Day.

Paul Robertson, director of risk assessment with TruSecure and the original proponent of the idea, said that safer home systems mean a more secure Internet in general.

"The zombies used for DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks and the proxy servers that help spammers are all on consumers' home machines," he said. "That's the biggest part of the security problem on the Internet."

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