Computer Viruses
and other people's use of your computers
Lately, there has been (in my viewpoint) a rash of too much television
watching, a majority of parents with no idea of how to raise their children to
be able to accomplish their own goals, psychiatric drugs and their less dangerous
cousins, the street drugs. These helped to bring about the recent adoption of
the all-important "I" or "ME First" attitudes
and the loss of the viewpoint of "Oh yes, there are others around me that
I may want to live, work and play with."
Because of this, there are more people these days who waste their
time and energy on attempts to destroy other people's computer data rather than
attain the goals they once had when they were young. This situation is unfortunate,
but currently a fact of all computer user's lives and therefore cannot be ignored.
Currently, there are two major types of external intrusion into
your systems due to the above:
(1) COMPUTER VIRUSES
Viruses are programs created with the intention of anything from harmless pranks
to out-and-out destruction of your hard-worked on data, your complete operating
system and/or your motherboard. These are usually acquired by running a program
with the virus already attached to it.
Please note: This can be a program or, yes, even an email you
downloaded from the Internet, received from a friend on a floppy, CD or other
disk or even bought from a respected (or otherwise) retailer.
Once run, depending on the virus, any other program run in that
session will most likely be corrupted with the virus, along with the first part
of your hard drive which is read when powering up your system. This last action
ensures that the virus will always be in memory and able to infect any program
you run.
Most small businesses are aware enough to have installed anti-virus
software, however, most of you do not know that there are some 1-200 new viruses
PER MONTH, and so, do not get your virus data files updated. This can cause major
trouble down the road, especially if your backup system fails you or (hopefully
not true) doesn't exist.
(2) TROJANS
The purpose of a Trojan is just as it was in the days of the Greek and Trojan
war. To get the enemy into your "camp" without your knowledge and do
anything from poking around to stealing data to wreaking general havoc or just
wiping out your systems. These are generally programs that can be sent into your
computer once you are connected to the Internet and/or have been programmed into
various purchased, shareware or freeware programs such as the recent event of
a famous audio player program which was sending data from your system back to
it's creator's server.
The way Trojans work, you should first know that computers communicate
over the Internet in a similar fashion to the FM band of your radio, the whole
band. Usually, you have many stations on your FM band to choose from, correct?
Ok. It is the same on the Internet. To the tune of over 65,535 channels called
"ports". These ports are for the most part relegated to various jobs
by the engineers that try to standardize the Internet and how computers communicate
on it. For instance, when you browse the "web" you use port 80, when
you send email from your system you use port 25, when you receive email into your
system you use port 110, etc. However, not all ports are classified to what their
purpose is or will be so there are a lot of "free" ports to play with.
Now, let us say that you want to communicate to another computer.
You can use any of those free ports to send another system data, if that system
was found to be accepting data on that port. And since most small business users
don't know any better, they have no firewall (software or hardware to keep intruders
out of your systems) or anti-trojan software installed on their systems.
For example, here is a typical situation:
An office decides it wants "fast Internet access" and orders a DSL or
cable connection to the Internet with an Internet connection for every system
on the network. Speed is nice, believe me, but this office is now wide open on
around 60,000 ports to the outside world - on each computer connected to the Internet
in this manner or many others - including modem connections! Not a pretty picture
in the security crew's eyes I assure you.
How can your systems be protected? Most current anti-virus software
protects your computers against some 45,000+ viruses, however, most current anti-virus
software do not protect you against the 300+ Trojans.
We can help.
SOLUTION
Computer Technology Solutions. can install and maintain name-brand software that will
protect your systems against Trojans and viruses. The typical cost of a set of
these software for the average Microsoft Windows PC system is only around $30-$90.00
depending on the brand of software and installation which would usually take less
than a 20 minutes for both packages per system. Depending on your network, setup
and configuration may take longer. We can also keep your systems updated with
a monthly service contract so that you have less of a chance of becoming a victim
to either one of these programs.
Call us today for a free quote!
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For detailed information and explanations about how we can enhance your office’s
efficiency and productivity, contact us at (336) 945-0370
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