+ Viruses

What are Viruses

Viruses are computer programs that behave like real world viruses in a computer context. Computers contract viruses due to unaware users or exploiting security lapses in the operating system or software. When a computer is infected with one of these viruses, his or her computer can be tasked to send spam (Spam Zombie), give remote access to the virus maker, be used to launch denial of service attacks, become unusable, or lose data.

What you can do about it

  • Use anti-virus program and keep the updates to that program current. This will prevent most problems but not all. There is a bit of lag time between when a virus is released in the wild and when an update is available. This is usually a few hours to a day or two for most companies.
  • Keep your operation system and software current. No software is free from bugs and some bugs can be exploited to install software on a users operating system. Most providers patch their software as soon as they are aware of a vulnerability. However viruses exploiting that vulnerability may be out with days if not hours of the patch release (as well as before, if the provider has been slow to patch its software), so install patches immediately.
  • Firewalls can also reduce virus risk. Firewalls can block all traffic to certain ports, but it cant see what the traffic is. It will not stop virus traffic coming in on open trusted ports, but an application listening on that port may simply ignore it if its not the type of traffic an application takes. More information about firewalls here.

Using all the above suggestions will limit your virus risk to near zero. For more detail on each application, read the manuals provided by the application.

Useful Resources

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