Tip of the Month
Every month our Director, Axel Oudijk, gives business users a top tip to help prevent problems that might adverseley affect their office network in the future.
Tip of the Month - October
Always keep your Anti-Virus software up to date.
Viruses, worms and Trojan horses; some will wipe your hard-drive but even the least benign will clog up your computer and may eventually lead to data loss. The Creeper virus was first detected on Arpanet, the forerunner of the Internet in the early 1970s. It propagated via the Tenex operating system and could make use of any connected modem to dial out to remote computers and infect them. It would display the message "I'M THE CREEPER : CATCH ME IF YOU CAN". Today there are thousands and thousands of "malware" programmes ready to pounce on the un-suspecting.
In the old days ( pre 2000 ) we always used to recommend a separate Internet machine that was not connected to the rest of the network, so if any viruses were downloaded they would not spread to the server or other desktops. Nowadays of course everyone needs access to the Internet from their individual desktop machines so it is even more important to keep your Anti-Virus software up to date.
As the virus libraries held by the Anti-Virus software producers are updated daily, even going one month over your subscription end date makes you vulnerable to the latest sick creation from some nerd-warrior in cyberspace.
At Aires we recommend Symantec Enterprise Edition for networked computers and Kaspersky Anti-Virus 7.0 / Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0 for Laptops and home / individual PC's. The good news is that we are official re-sellers of these products so you can buy through us and get the same end user price you'd find elsewhere.
Of course if you're running a business it's useful to prevent rather than cure, so make sure that your Firewalls work properly and that you have Anti-Spyware software too, especially if you spend a lot of time on the Internet.
Finally if you do happen to find some strange looking attachment in an e-mail then don't touch it and delete the mail if you can. If you're ever on the Internet and a window pops up showing you that a download you did not request is in progress, don't mess about and push the manual Restart button on your machine!
