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This month's
topic: Computer Viruses and How to Protect Yourself |
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What are
computer viruses and how do they spread? |
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How can I
protect myself and my business? |
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We have a lot of
computers in the office, is there a better way? |
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A note on Hoaxes |
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Featured Links:
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This month's topic: Computer
Viruses and
How to Protect Yourself
April 14, 2003
Dear Subscriber,
I’m excited to present the premier issue of the Small Business
Computing Newsletter. Our newsletter takes a computer-related subject
and break it down into simple easy-to-understand terms.
Our subject for the month is computer viruses: what are they and how to
protect yourself. I believe you will find that there is good
information in here that will help you with your business.
As always, if you like this newsletter and know someone who you think
would be interested in it, feel free to forward it to them (in its
entirety). They can subscribe themselves by going to our web site and
clicking on "Newsletter". The link is in the footer.
Enjoy!
-Cyrus Lendvay
What are
computer viruses and how do they spread?
Computer viruses
are software programs that are written by malicious people to
automatically spread themselves as quickly as possible. They usually
have very negative effects like deleting files, stealing data, or
making
people look bad by emailing infected files to everybody in their
address
book.
Before everybody had email, viruses had to spread by infecting floppy
disks that were moved from one computer to the next. With email, a
virus can spread itself across the globe in a matter of seconds. These
days, they can even infect documents. And, of course, they can still be
spread the old fashion way by infected files shared between computers.
Some disguise themselves as useful programs, but do their dirty work in
the background. They are called Trojan Horses.
One more important note is that new viruses are found all the time.
Anti-virus software companies create "definition" files that are lists
of all viruses and how to protect from them. They update these
definitions files every few days. It's important to be sure that your
anti-virus software is using the most current version so that you won't
get hit by new viruses. More on that in the next section.
All of this may sound a bit overwhelming, but don't worry, there are
things you can do to protect yourself from these nasty little buggers.
How can I
protect myself and my business?
The number one
thing you can do to protect yourself is to use good Anti-virus software
and update it regularly. There are three major companies that I tend to
work with. They all make great software that will protect you. They are
Symantec, McAfee, and Trend Micro. Links to each of them are in the
featured links section of this newsletter. When you set one up, make
sure to set up automatic updates. If you have an always-on connection
to the internet (like DSL or cable modem), I'd suggest having it update
every day. It doesn't take much bandwidth just to get the updates and
you'll have the peace of mind of knowing you're up to date.
In larger environments (say over 10 people), I like to add virus
protection to the email server also. This reduces the likelihood that
one of the client’s machines will have old virus definitions and spread
things to the other machines. It's easy to be sure that a few machines
have up-to-date virus definitions. When you get to larger environments,
it gets tougher and tougher to do it manually. If you have more than
about 10 people, see the section below on enterprise anti-virus
solutions.
Don't forget to back up your data. This is probably the second most
important thing to protect yourself from viruses. Even if you get
infected, you will be able to recover if you have good backups of your
data. For single machines, you can use a CD burner or removable hard
drive for backups. Just remember to actually remove the removable hard
drive when you're done backing up. Otherwise, your backups may suffer
the same fate. Once you get above a few users in the office, nothing
beats an automated backup scheme that includes off-site storage. Simply
put, backups seem to slip people's minds until they need them. If
backups happen automatically and are tested regularly, you'll be
comfortable in the knowledge that your business can be rebuilt.
Don't open email attachments unless you were expecting something from
that person. If you get an email from someone with an attachment saying
"Here's that file you were looking for", call them to be sure that they
intended to send you an attachment. When viruses spread themselves
through email, they name the attachments in a way to try to get you to
open them.
And, don't download random software from the internet. If you have any
questions about the source, it's probably just better to do without.
We have a lot
of computers in the office, is there a better way?
There sure is.
Two of the three vendors I mentioned (Symantec and Trend Micro) have
"Enterprise" applications that allow you to centralize the control of
anti-virus software. What we do is install this software on a server.
It becomes the central point for anti-virus software control for all
other servers and workstations on your network. We have it grab updated
virus definitions automatically and force them out to the other
computers. We can then take a look at the console and see exactly what
versions of the software and definitions each computer has. This
significantly reduces the likelihood that one will be overlooked and
end
up infecting the others.
Once your company gets to be a certain size, this is the safest and
most cost effective way to go. It's really worth it.
A note on
Hoaxes
A discussion of
viruses wouldn't be complete without a note about hoaxes. Have you ever
gotten an email that says there is a new terrible virus out that will
do
all kinds of terrible things? It recommends that you immediately
forward this message to as many people as possible so that they will
all
know about it. It’s a hoax and you should delete it. Don't forward it
to anybody because it'll just propagate the misinformation.
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