|
|
|
Protecting
Your System Against Viruses
It really isn't hard to protect your computer system from virus attack. By following the simple recommendations on this page, you should be able to dramatically reduce the risk of system damage, data loss, and expenditure of time and money due to viral infections. Back it up. In my humble opinion, this is the single most important thing you can do to protect your system. It won't prevent a virus infection, but it will make it possible for you to quickly recover from a virus infection, or from any of the other (and more likely) problems you are likely to encounter, due to human error, software glitches, power surges, hardware failure, etc. With good backup system these events are annoyances – without a backup, they can be disasters. For more information on doing backups, see How-to: Transferring Large Files.
Keep your anti-virus program updated. Norton now lists more than 45,000 viruses, and new ones are found nearly every day. Both Norton and McAfee publish weekly updates to the virus databases (Norton calls these "virus definitions") which the anti-virus programs use to detect viruses. Both programs are designed to make it fairly easy and painless to download and install these updates. To be fully protected, your system has to have up-to-date virus information, so update your programs regularly – preferably, at least every two weeks. Scan your system regularly. Norton and McAfee anti-virus software works in two ways: a background anti-virus scanner that is always running, looking for signs of viral activity, and a file scan that examines some or all of your files for embedded viruses. You should run the scan regularly, at least weekly. If every file is being scanned, it can take a while, so plan to do it when you won't be using the computer, like during lunch. Have current rescue disks. These anti-virus programs allow you to create a set of "rescue disks" on floppy disks. In the event your system does get infected, the rescue disks will allow you to boot the system from a floppy disk, and hopefully eliminate the virus and restore the system. Make a set of rescue disks, keep them up-to-date, and keep them in a safe place. Practice "safe computing." Be very cautious when downloading files from the Internet, opening E-mail attachments, or using floppy disks that someone else has given you. Treat all of these things as potential sources of infection. You don't need to work with latex gloves on, but you should scan all of these things with your anti-virus program before using them. Keep Windows updated. Microsoft regularly releases updates to Windows. Some of these add features or improve performance, while others correct security problems that keep being discovered. You may not be interested in having all the latest Windows bells and whistles, but it's a very good idea to keep up with the security updates. If you are using Windows 98 or Windows 2000, or Windows 95 with Internet Explorer 5 installed, you can go Microsoft's Windows Update site. Click on Start -->Windows Update, or open Internet Explorer and go directly to the site at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Once you're at the Windows Update page, click on "Product Updates," which will download a small program that analyses the Windows components already installed on your computer, and gives you a list of available updates. The ones to be concerned about here are the ones labeled "Critical Updates." Follow the instructions to download and install these on your computer. If you're using Windows 95 and don't have Internet Explorer 5 installed, you can find a list of Windows updates on the Windows 95 download page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/. (This page will not tell you which updates are already installed on your computer, so keep track of what you do to avoid repeating yourself.)
Next:
Go to "Current Virus and Security Issues"
Pine
Tree Folk School |
