As a web site owner you have a special relationship with viruses. Firstly, you must provide a web environment clean from viruses. Secondly, you may find yourself under attack from malicious viruses more often than normal.

There is nothing more embarassing than contracting a virus, especially if it uses your precious address book to spread itself to all your clients, friends and associates.

This WEB ADVISOR can help you keep things safe.

Having the proper software to protect your work stations is very important. Generally there are software suites offered by SYMANTEC and MCAFEE that work fairly well. As a user I personally recommend the SYMANTEC products for their reliability and ease of installation and use.

These packages come with the ability to update the software live over the Internet. This is very important. In fact, you will want to ensure that an update is done at least weekly. New viruses can come out and spread very rapidly.

You can also ask the software to periodically scan your hard drive for viruses. A good period is once per week. You should also schedule this when you normally don't work on your computer, but it is switched on.

A great way to send a file to a friend/client is to attach it to an e-mail. Malicious virus creators realize this and have created viruses that send you a file just like a friend would. Bottom line: You cannot even trust your friends to send you clean files!

To survive in this dangerous world you can take precautions. For example if the attachment ends in any of the following extensions it is probably a virus. (Do not open it, simply delete it):

• .EXE
• .COM
• .VBS
• .PIF
• .BAT
• .SCR

Keep in mind that MP3, MPEG, AVI, REAL AUDIO/VIDEO, JPEG and GIF files cannot carry viruses. But, watch out for a hacker's trick in naming a file something like "COOL-PICTURE.JPG.VBS". This file may look like a .JPG file but it is actually an .VBS file.

When you see a file name where there are two extensions, you should almost always expect it to be a virus.

Normally, you would have to click on the attachment to contract the virus, but recent viruses have demonstrated that it is possible for E-mail to automatically execute malicious code, even without the user opening an attachment.

Install the Microsoft update that fixes these above-mentioned vulnerabilities. To install these updates select WINDOWS UPDATE in the MSIE browser. A list of critical updates (if any) will appear. You may install these automatically by following the instructions.

To be extra careful you may also check the Microsoft Security Advisor regularly for Bulletins and fixes to other vulnerabilities that are published weekly.

New viruses are being created daily. Don't ever expect virus software and Microsoft "fixes" to keep up with the hackers. It is up to you to protect yourself in these cases.

Don't open unexpected attachments from trusted sources until you confirm that they actually sent them. Never open attachments from suspicious or unknown sources.

If someone gives you some software, possibly a program or simply files, on a diskette or CD you should scan the disk before you run and of the programs or copy them to your hard drive.

It shouldn't be necessary to scan software CDs or Diskettes published by reputable companies.

You should also scan any files that you download off the internet.

It is still necessary to protect our computers from BOOT SECTOR VIRUSES.

If you have a good anti-virus software package loaded you should be safe, but still you should not be in the habit of booting up your computer with a diskette in the floppy drive. If this diskette contains a boot sector virus it will soon infect your computer. This is specifically not a good thing, because some of these boot sector viruses can be very nasty.

It should go without saying that any file that you provide as a download on your web site should be clean of viruses. Can you imagine unknowingly distributing a virus from your own web site? (Bad news!)

Use your anti-virus software to ensure everything is clean.

If the inevitable happens, and you contract a virus, don't despair. Follow your anti-virus software's instructions carefully. You can also consult additional instructions on a web site like SYMANTEC. You will also find virus-removal tools at the SYMANTEC web site.

By using these tools it can help you get back on track easier than if you just re-formatted your entire hard drive. Re-formatting your hard drive should only be done when everything else has failed.

If you need further help feel free to contact us. We can set things straight for you.

© 2001 - Mark Nelson - Multipoint Productions

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