A few days ago, news broke that a computer worm had hitched a ride on the International Space Station by stowing away on the astronauts’ laptops, which were reportedly unprotected by antivirus software.

The worm, Gammima.AG, which replicates itself and steals passwords to online games, was discovered about a year ago and isn’t considered high-risk.

Still, if the astronaut has followed the advice in our 7 Online Blunders report, namely to make sure you’ve got activated and updated security software on your computer, Gammima.AG would never had made it out of earth’s biosphere.

So no matter where you take your laptop (or desktop), make sure it has security software properly installed and running.

—Jeff Fox