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Anti-Virus Protection
Virus protection is a must have! Viruses are pieces
of software that are smuggled into your computer. Most popular is
the path via e-mail. But viruses can also get onto your computer
via floppy-disk transfers or by directly access your internet connection.
As you can read and find out in Anti-Intrusion,
your machine might be open to attacks from the Internet
If you get infected
If a virus (hoax, trojan horse, worm, etc.) gets onto your machine
you are in for trouble. Depending on the kind and malignancy, viruses
may
- let "things" pop up on your screen
- slow down the operation of your machine
- completely corrupt your operating system
- may reformat you hard-drive
- use your machine and Internet connection to spread
Nothing of this is funny. But there are some a...
out there who think it is. Viruses can cause a lot of damage to
you machine and your data integrity. And one thing is for sure,
you don't want that to happen to you.
Don't clean, prevent
Recently I cleaned a computer from a virus. The machine didn't
have virus protection and got "infected" via an e-mail.
The virus slowed the machine and in particular the Internet connection
down. It also send a "shadow" e-mail every time an e-mail
was sent from this computer. The only good thing about this was
that I could easily identify the virus by catching it in my virus
scanner.
Cleaning the machine was a bit tricky. Pre-scanning
the machine with a newly bought anti-virus software didn't help,
since the virus database was too old. Trying to scan through the
Internet failed, since the virus blocked access to all virus protection
sites I know.
I had to
- "hand clean" the machine
- retrieve corrupted systems files from the operating system
CD
- install the anti-virus software and update it through the
Internet
- let the anti-virus software do the final cleaning
Took me a while to do plus, I had to "educate"
myself about the workings of the virus first.
How would you like paying me half a day of work
at $75 per hour!??
Get yourself Virus Protection
Unless you are not connected to the Internet, never get e-mail and
never exchange information on a disk (are you living in the wilderness?)
get yourself a virus protection software.
There are numerous companies selling anti-virus
software or offering the service over the Internet (for free). I
have never bothered about free offers or service over the Internet
I simply don't trust it. Free software might not be updated fast
enough to protect against new threads. The Internet connection to
the service provider might be down, which doesn't mean that I still
get e-mails.
I rely on my virus protection and therefore bought
myself Symantecs Norton-Antivirus. Another product I have used is
the McAfee software. You find links to both companies on the right.
Operating Systems other
than Windows
It really amazes me that there are people who think that only
Windows operating systems and computers can be infected by viruses.
It's about as dumb as thinking that there are airplanes that cannot
crash.
It is true, virus attacks on e.g. UNIX operating
systems are not so popular on both yours and a hackers site. But
they exist and always existed as
you can read in this article. During the time I was administering
UNIX workstations it was a concern.
Looking around I found one company, which also
offers Virus Protection solutions for UNIX and other operating
systems. The company is Sophos and has a proven record. You find
the link on the right.
Whatever you do
Whatever you do, make sure you get a product
- which permanently "watches" (auto-protects) your system
and
- which is permanently supported and gets regular virus database
updates
Make sure its protecting
you
Once you have installed your anti-virus software, make sure it is
up-to date and actively protecting your system.
- Make sure you are auto-protecting your computer
- Make sure that you update your virus protection database at
least every month. If there is an actual new thread, get a virus
database update as soon as it is available.
- Keep yourself informed about new threads through the services
of you anti-virus protection company. They usually provide and
e-mail notification system.
Network Protection
All companies I named on this site provide corporate solutions.
Providing each individual machine on a corporate network with its
own copy of a virus protection software is both, a waste of money
and risky. It is risky, because you leave it up to the individual
user to keep the virus protection up-to-date. Its better managed
through the network administrator.
If you have questions
or want consultation
If you have questions or want consultation please contact
me.
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