Many people do not know it, but your computers BIOS can become infected with malware. The most famous was the Chernobyl virus back in the 90’s. These days, there is less of a chance of this happening, but it is much better to be safe than sorry. There is a way to make sure your BIOS is secure and to protect it from any potential malware infections.

The first step in your safety plan is to protect your BIOS with an administrator password that must be entered before a BIOS update can occur. Boot or reboot your PC. While it’s starting up, repeatedly tap the ‘DEL,’ ‘F1,’ or whatever other special key is required to launch the BIOS. This information is typically displayed onscreen during the boot process, although it might not be immediately obvious. This text, for instance, appears verbatim at the bottom of the screen for just a few moments after we start our computer. Once your BIOS setup menu is loaded, look for the menu item that enables you to set up a password. There might be more than one. It may be listed as SET SUPERVISOR PASSWORD or SECURITY OPTIONS. Select the menu item for creating the password and enter a password (usually twice, to verify what you typed the first time). If you think you might have trouble remembering the password later, as you’ll access your BIOS infrequently, make sure you write it down somewhere. Save your BIOS changes and your computer will reboot. From here on out you’ll need to enter this password before any changes can be made to your BIOS, ensuring malware will have a harder time harming your PC.