Viruses - Guarding Against Them

It is an unfortunate reality that people create computer viruses and then release their work into the Internet and the world at large. Some of these creations are relatively benign others are extremely destructive. You MUST guard against computer viruses if you have valuable data on you computer and do not want your machine rendered inoperable.

Guarding against viruses is going to cost you money, but not guarding against them with not only cost you a lot more money but it will cause you considerable grief while you try to recover information that has been damaged or lost as the result of an infection.

Firstly, to guard against an infection you need to install an Anti-Virus software package. And once you have installed it you need to keep it updated regularly if it does not update itself. By regularly I’m talking about once a week not once a month or once a year.

Updating the AV software may not be enough. On a system that I had responsibility for I updated the anti-virus package one day and the machine got hit by a virus the following day. The AV software said that it had stopped the infection, it had not!

Secondly, in guarding you machine you must also have a data backup regime. At a minimum, backup the files that you create, all of them if you can, the important ones if you can’t backup all your files easily.

You should backup your data at least once a week. And your backup system should have redundancy built into it - don’t be dependant on one disc or tape! Where once a week would be insufficient two common systems are as follows.

Three media system: A Day disc/tape which is used daily except for on one, specific, day in the week when one of the two Week discs/tapes is used. This system will let you go back two weeks.

Eight media system: Four Day discs/tapes and four Week discs/tapes (for a five day working week, additional Day media would be needed for six of seven day working.) Each Day disc/tape is given a day name. And the Week media named Week 1, Week 2 etc. or Thursday 1, Thursday 2 etc.

Each day a backup is made to the media for the day, the week media being assigned to one day of the week and being used in a four week rotation. This system will not only let you go back a month but it will also let you recover to a specific day within the last week.

A few paragraphs above I told you not to be dependant on one disc or tape. The backup media you use should be replaced on a regular basis, the replacement period being dependant upon the type of media you use.

An obvious benefit of backups to protect again viruses is that you are also guarding against hardware failure - hard drives do die. And in an ideal world you would also store your backup media “off site” to guard against physical destruction of both it and the machine(s) it pertains to.

Which AV package? I use Norton but anything has got to be better than nothing. Ideally you should also install a Firewall as well as a AV software. Talk to your software supplier.

Am I crying wolf? No, I am getting an increasing number of calls for help from people who’s machine is “Not working properly.” “Yes I have AV installed, it was installed two years ago.” “Last updated?” “It hasn’t been updated. Should it have been?” If you do not protect against computer viruses you could be wishing that you had.

Hoaxes

Finally, it is entirely possible that you will receive e-mail, from someone you know, telling you that they have inadvertently infected your machine with a virus that none of the major AV packages can detect. And that you should go to search for a named file on your machine and delete it to get rid of the virus.

It is very highly likely that this will be a hoax. Some malicious person is, potentially, causing as much havoc as a virus author without ever writing a line of code. The hoaxer is playing upon not wholly unfounded virus paranoia.

If you receive an e-mail telling you to delete a named file, do a search on the Internet for the name of the file before doing anything else, like as not you will find reference to it on one of the AV sites as being a hoax.

MLI, Sasquatch Design Oct., 2002.