Virus Protection Guidelines

Virus Protection Guidelines

Occasionally, clients ask me what best practices they should follow after gaining Internet access. I'm glad they ask. This month, I will explain my virus protection guidelines.

Prove that your virus protection is active. When I say "active," I mean that it runs automatically when you start Windows. Virus protection programs have a "Real time" mode that lets them run in the background and intercept any incoming viruses. These viruses appear either as e-mail attachments or as applets that roam the Internet looking for unprotected computers.

Different applications provide different ways to verify that they are working. For example, AVG has a four-color icon in the System Tray (lower right-hand corner, near the clock). You can double-click this icon and verify that the product is working right.

Suppose it does not load automatically, or worse yet, is disabled. If that is the case, odds are pretty good that your computer already has a virus. Newer viruses can infect computers with out-of-date virus protection. That brings us to our next point.

Prove that your virus protection is current. Virus writers are a prolific group. Back in 2004, I originally reported here that virus writers have distributed more than 66,000 viruses and worms to unsuspecting Internet users. New viruses appear every day. Sometimes old viruses reappear with a few changes and get assigned new names. Finding a current count of viruses roaming the Internet is no longer an easy task. Computer security companies including Grisoft, Symantec and Trend Microsystems peruse the Internet looking for new viruses. When they encounter a newly found virus, they: a) determine its payload (what the virus seeks to accomplish), b) assign it a name, c) determine how to quarantine the virus and any files it infects, d) publish updates and e) hope users download those updates before the new virus finds them.

These companies update their products aggressively and make those updates available for a nominal charge to their subscribers. When their subscribers run their antivirus applications, the applications routinely look for updates. Grisoft's AVG checks for updates once every 4 hours. The general idea is to download an update before the virus actually reaches your computer.

If your virus protection is more than one week old, it is too old.

Some computer companies bundle virus protection with free short-term subscriptions. I've seen some preinstalled antivirus products with a 90-day free subscription. As the 90- day free subscription expires, users mistakenly ignore messages to update their subscriptions. Eventually, the virus protection stops updating and becomes flagrantly out of date. If you're running a new computer, make sure that your virus protection is both active and current.