McAfee Avert Labs Blog is currently having a series of blog posts. Entitled Breakdown/Breaking It Down (the branding is not yet established), the series attempts to explain security applications, how-things-work style. The posts are clear, using easy-to-understand analogies.

Here are the latest posts in the series:

Breaking It Down: What’s a Firewall, and Why Do I Care?

Breakdown: How Does AV Software Deal With Software Exploits?

Monitor the series. The blog URL is http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/. If you have questions, you can leave a comment there, or ask and I will try to clarify.