Your computer contracting a computer virus is one of the biggest nightmares most of us could face. A virus could delete data from your computer, replicate itself and send it to everyone in your email address book, or even make your computer inoperable. A professional computer repair service can help you should any of these problems arise, but there are steps you can take beforehand to prevent this from happening.
Install anti-virus software on your computer and any computers that access your network. Make sure that the anti-virus software you’ve chosen is able to be updated when new viruses are found and then make sure they are kept up to date. It is important to update your anti-virus software both regularly and in a short time after the virus updates become available. Computer viruses can spread rapidly and attack with no notice, it would be a shame to lose data or a network when all it would’ve taken to make it secure would’ve been the installation of a virus update. If you have a business and some employees use either their own laptops from home or company laptops they take home or on the road with them, make sure that these are also kept up to date when it comes to their anti-virus packages.
Another thing to stay current and up-to-date on is software patches. Many software manufacturers, Microsoft included, offer patches to download and install if there are improvements to their security or to fix holes found in the security of the software they offer. Sometimes, it is easier to be well informed as to the availability of software patches if you join a mailing list from the company the software was purchased from.
An additional level of security can be provided if you can filter emails either at the network gateway, or at the Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) end of things. If spam and malicious email are filtered out before they reach a user’s computer there is a much better chance that their effects will be negated.
Being aware as to the signs of a virus is another piece of knowledge that all users should have. By being aware of your computer’s operating performance and alerting the proper people when that performance changes you may stop the damage from being done if a virus infection does occur.
Keep an eye out for email attachments that contain a file with more than one extension. If a file ends in .jpg.vbs it may appear to be a graphic image of some kind but it most likely is not. This is another method virus writers use to fool people into voluntarily downloading a virus. If you ever question whether a file you are going to download from a website or open from an attachment is legitimate or not, don’t download or install it until you can get the advice of a computer professional. For investigative purposes, it is also possible to type in the name of the file into the search field of your favorite search engine and if it is a virus it may come up with a link to a forum where people are discussing it.
It is also a good idea to protect your gateway with a firewall. This is true for a personal computer, company or home network, and for laptops that are used away from the office. These laptops that are used from home or from hotels will not be protected by the company’s network firewall and will need protection installed directly on them.
Making regular backups of your data is another way to protect yourself from at least the damage that some viruses can do. Although this step will not protect you from a virus, it will make it so that if a virus were to strike and delete your data, all would not be lost as you would have a recent backup in the form of a zip drive, online storage, cd-roms, or some other type of data storage.
While the damage a virus can do can be extreme, there are ways to protect yourself so that it doesn’t happen to you. Though there are some instances when a well protected system will be infiltrated by a computer virus anyway, you are definitely improving your odds by being well informed and having a computer system that is well protected.
Mark Allen provides the knowledge you need to protect yourself from a computer virus, spyware, and Internet scams at: www.saferemails.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=M._Allen
tag: computer virus, virus, trojan, worm, anti-virus, antivirus, internet security
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