Anti-virus Protection, Your Best Defense Against Computer Headaches

If there's one word that can strike fear in the heart of any computer user, it is "virus." Viruses can generate so much fear in the cyber world that news of a new virus often spreads faster than the virus itself.

What is a Virus?

A computer virus, similar to a biological virus, is a computer program that attaches itself to other programs and replicates itself from computer to computer.

Viruses, as purely replicating entities, will not harm your system. The real damage–the erasing of files, the formatting of hard drives, the scrambling of partition tables, etc.–is caused by intentional destructive code contained within the virus. Often, the destructive part of a virus is programmed to execute when certain conditions are met, usually a certain date, day, time, or number of infections.

What Is A Macro Virus?

Macro viruses replicate differently than conventional viruses by attaching themselves to a specific program such as Microsoft Word or Excel. The viruses then take advantage of the features of Microsoft Word or Excel such as sophisticated macro languages and automation.

What is a Worm?

Computer worms are malicious programs that copy themselves from system to system, rather than infiltrating legitimate files. A mass-mailing email worm, for example, is a worm that sends copies of itself via email. There are network worms, Internet worms, and so on. They makes copies of itself spreading throughout networks, vulnerable computers on the Internet, and so on.

What is a Trojan?

A Trojan is software that does something other than the user expected, with that “something” usually being malicious. Most Trojans are remote access programs that perform illicit operations such as password-stealing or which allow compromised machines to be used for targeted denial of service attacks.

The term malware, or malicious software, could be used to refer to all of these forms of invasion. Malware has been defined as any program, file, or code that performs malicious actions on the target system without the user’s express consent.

Recently, new forms of security threats have surfaced in the form of spyware, adware, and web browser hijacking. These forms of software are sometimes referred to as "sneakyware". Sneakyware is any program, file, or code that the user agrees to run or install without realizing the full implications of that choice.

The spread of computer viruses, worms and trojans can be prevented by having an effective anti-virus strategy in place.

Three Steps to an Effective Anti-virus Strategy

Do you download files, use diskettes or CDs from outside parties or use email? If so, you should develop an anti-virus strategy.

The first step in your anti-virus strategy should be to install anti-virus software. In some cases, you may wish to use more than one solution as no one product can do everything. When selecting your anti-virus software some things to consider include: the reputation of the software vendor, the frequency of updates to virus protection, the ease of use, the management capabilities on a standalone as well as a network environment, and the impact on machine performance.

Another important weapon in your anti-virus arsenal is a clean, write-protected bootable system diskette. Booting from a clean write-protected diskette is the only way to start up your system without any viruses in memory. Most anti-virus software packages have utilities that can help you create this diskette or CD. In addition, they will include a copy of the scanning software to help you identify and remove the virus from your machine.

Thirdly, an effective defense against viruses is a clean backup of your hard drive. In some cases, it may be difficult to remove the virus completely. A good reliable backup ensures this problem is avoided and everything is back to normal.

Veraciti can help you develop and implement an anti-virus strategy that will protect you and your computers from the headaches and losses that viruses cause. Like an apple a day, a good anti-virus strategy can keep the computer doctor at bay.