How To Protect Your Computer From Viruses?

What is a computer virus and how do you get one?

If you depend on the information stored on your personal computer, you need to understand how computer viruses spread, and you should use anti-virus software to reduce the chance that a computer virus will infect your programs and files.

A computer virus is a program that makes copies of itself and infects files. Computer viruses can spread to other computers and files whenever infected files are exchanged. Often infected files come as email attachments, even from people you know. The email senders have no idea that they are passing on a file with a virus in it.

Some computer viruses can erase or change the information stored on your computer, other viruses may do little or no harm to your system. Writing and releasing any virus is prohibited by university policy, and anyone who does so will be held legally accountable for damages.

How to protect your computer?

There are several things that you should do to protect your computer from virus infections:

  • Use a high-quality anti-virus program, and be sure to update it regularly. Use it to scan any files, programs, software, or diskettes (even new software from a commercial company) before you use them on your computer.
  • Make back-up copies of important documents or files and store them on separate diskettes. Making backups will also protect your information against accidental file deletion, diskette failure, and other damage.
  • Whenever you use a computer in a campus lab, be sure to reboot or run “cleanup” before you start your session and log out when you end your session.
  • Do not share commerical software with anyone. It is a violation of the author’s copyright to distribute such material, and it is a way to spread viruses.
  • When you get public domain (PD) software for which the author has granted permission to make copies, get it from a reliable source. (For example, and individual you do not know is not a reliable source.) Before you run PD material, use an anit-virus program to inspect for known viruses.
  • Always scan your disks and files after using them on another computer.
  • Always scan all files you download from the Internet.
  • Always scan Word or Excel file email attachments before you read them.

What if your computer gets a virus?

Not all damage to your programs and files is caused by viruses: worn out floppies, failing hard drives, user error, and poorly written programs can all cause you to lose data. If your computer is behaving strangely, or if you think your computer has a virus, use an anti-virus program to find out.

If your computer is infected with a virus, DON’T PANIC! Use an anti-virus program to remove the virus yourself, or turn your computer off and find someone who knows how to remove the virus.

If a virus is active in memory, it may prevent anti-virus programs from working correctly. To be sure no virus is active, turn off your computer and reboot from a known-clean system diskette before you begin the disinfection process.

Eliminate all copies of the virus as quickly as possible. Check all your diskettes, and warn anyone else who may have infected files or disks.

Remember, most viruses can be removed without permanent damage to your system, and most virus infections can be prevented. With proper care, your computer can remain virus-free.

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What risks do viruses pose to the data on internal or external hard drive?

Rirus Recovery When it comes to data storage, viruses can be divided into two basic categories:

  • Viruses that delete data.
  • Viruses that corrupt data.

Viruses that delete data will tell the Operating System (such as Windows) to flag files as being deleted. The data itself becomes unavailable but it still exists on the platters until it’s overwritten. This data is recoverable using 3rd-party data recovery softwares which will scan the platters and mark recognizable files as not deleted, effectively restoring them to the directory structure.

Viruses that corrupt data are the most dangerous because they overwrite files with garbage data and then possibly flag them as deleted. This makes the data unrecoverable.
In either case, it is very important to have Antivirus software running on any machine whether it’s connected to the internet or not (viruses can be propagated from CDs, floppies, and other storage mediums) and keep a backup of any critical data on a removable storage device which will help prevent viruses from propagating to your backup.

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Virus Protection Key to Healthy Computing

Computer viruses are proving to be highly complex but preventing viruses from infecting your computer systems is simple. Use two well-known brands of anti-virus software and keep them as current as possible.

Beyond that, there are some simple, common sense procedures that everyone should use, whether at work or in the home computing environment. Never open a file whose origins are unknown. In a simpler day, that wisdom only applied to executable files, or files that did something. They have the suffixes .exe, .com and .bat and each can start a program on your computer. These viruses spread through games downloaded from the Internet, on borrowed diskettes and through the old ‘bulletin board’ services.

Today, unfortunately, a whole new wave of viruses has been unleashed on unsuspecting computer users because software manufacturers introduced feature-rich new programs without considering how vulnerable they are to viruses. Now, almost any document and many email messages can carry and spread ‘macro’ viruses at lightning speed. That’s why it is so important never to open messages or documents from unknown sources. Viruses can delete data, change file names or even damage the physical media the data where the data is stored.

How important is virus protection?
If your data is critical to your business operations, there is nothing more important. Even though about 75 per cent of all data loss incidents are caused by human error or system malfunctions, a virus attack can still cripple your data center. A combination of regular, verified backups and constantly updated virus protection are absolutely essential to protect your data – and your organization.

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