Guard Against Trojans, Worms & Viruses

Today was yet another reminder - smack right in the face. You must always be alert when reading email messages and browsing the internet for trojans, worms and viruses. This past weekend a couple "trojan horse" viruses tried to get loose in our network. The bad guys were namely "Trojan.Gcoder.E", "Trojan.Gen" and "Trojan.Zbot". It should be noted that the way in which most of these spread from one computer to another is first through an infected email. Because the email itself does not include an actual attachment with it these messages will sometimes get past the best of firewalls. Once this happens there is still hope for those of us who only desire clean and unaffected computers.

It should also be remembered that every virus protection company from Symantec to McAfee must respond to these evil programs after they are loose in the wild. Therefore even having the best and updated security software is often not enough. That is where we human beings need to be aware of the situation and act accordingly.

The first and best rule you should apply is "common sense". The various forms of infections often start with email messages promising something you want, if you would only click on the link in the message. Do not do this - no matter how inticing the message may sound. Offers of most anything free are almost going to lead you to a bad place on some darkened corner in the internet. As an example about a year ago I received a suspicious email offering me all 720 episodes of Star Trek on DVD for free. All I was asked to do was click on the link in the email and fill out the "registration form". Even though I really wanted those amazing DVDs I did not click on the message. If I can do it - so can you!

The second rule is if you do not know who sent the email do not feel like you must click on the contents. If you think it might be a ligitamate message, do yourrself a favor and pick up the phone and call the person (sender) before clicking on the contents.

These simple rules will go along way in securing your personal information as well as your organization's information. In addition it can be very expensive to have a technology professional fix your computer.

The virus that impacted our organization was destroyed but I will never get those 6 hours back...