10 virus protection tips In order to have a tangible prospect of being protected against multiple security threats in the wild, a user should have an understanding of IT security issues and thus be prepared to tackle a potential invasion. The tips provided in this article are aimed at casting some light on practical methods for minimizing or even eliminating the risk of such contamination. The current situation resembles an ongoing battle with unequal chances as it’s getting worse as the time passes. According to research of ‘Computer Economics’, the annual worldwide expenses on malware protection have grown by $10 billion during the last 10 years, amounting to $13 billion in total. Furthermore, ‘Google Research’ stats testify to the fact one website out of ten is a potential distributor of malicious software. The most stunning thing here is even some reputable sites may serve as virus hosts, participating in the rotation of broad-scale scams. The latter aspect is most likely a consequence of latent domain compromising conducted by cyber crooks, aka hackers. This means, the site owners may be unaware of the exploits that were secretly embedded in their web pages and are now passing the malcode on to unsuspecting visitors. By the way, the notion of ‘hacking’ has definitely lost its initial romantic hue over years as these individuals have re-trained to be exceptionally profit-oriented and make money out of most disgusting schemes based solely on deceit or stealth. Under these circumstances, computer experts ought to consistently encourage the end users to follow certain security rules preventing the menace of virus or spyware infestation. The tech guys are often too busy to spend time teaching users though. This is why we decided to facilitate this and made a list of 10 steps one should take for ensuring ultimate defense against malicious software out there. Not only do these tips apply to corporate PCs at work; you will as well find them handy for maintaining the security of your home computer in every aspect of its usage. You can pass this list further to your fellow employees and friends. We assure they will be grateful in the long run. Tip 1: Install a trustworthy and reliable antivirus utility Many users assume the free AV software coming as a bundle to the Operating System or the hardware components suffices to provide adequate protection. In fact though, free applications of that kind are mostly incapable of supplying you with appropriate virus defense. Instead, all Windows users are recommended to install professional security software. These tools are more frequently updated, thus including the latest spyware signatures, definitions and combating a broader scope of threats, including rootkits. Moreover, sophisticated antivirus solutions enable custom scanning, letting you prioritize specific tasks in the context of your computer’s safety. Tip 2: Enable real-time spyware protection Some people think it’s perfectly enough to have an all-on-one antivirus utility with anti-spyware function at their disposal. Others rely on free anti-spyware combined with an antivirus, being certain that this configuration will do. Unfortunately none of these approaches will do the trick. Most free anti-spywares fail to ensure active protection from adware, trojan horses and other spyware pests. Even if they turn out capable of spotting such malware after the system injection, it takes only professional licensed software to actually delete those harmful objects and prevent them from reentering the PC. Also, viruses may often keep security software from launching. The present-day trusted applications can address this issue. Tip 3: Update your antivirus and anti-spyware on schedule These types of programs require regular signatures and database updates otherwise they will simply miss the brand-new threats. The recent statistical data affirms that most computer threats are stealthy by essence and tend to spread very rapidly. The lifetime of many such infections is very restricted but even despite this they manage to infect as many as 100K-300K computers a day. Furthermore, the rate of malware distribution can acquire a yet more powerful boost by taking advantage of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace etc. This is why it is critical to update your AV and anti-spyware as often as possible and prolong the license on time. This lets you keep the databases up to date and hence fight the fresh parasites. Tip 4: Get used to checking your system for viruses each day It’s common knowledge that some really tricky viruses and spyware succeed in bypassing even the most efficient antivirus tools. What is more, the quantity of new threats and their propagation speed are so astonishing that the intrusion becomes pretty much inevitable. Oftentimes, users unknowingly configure their antiviruses the wrong way, thus literally allowing malignant items to access their computers. Anyway, daily scanning of the whole hard drive provides supplementary system defense, detecting, isolating and removing the malicious software that managed to sneak past all security barriers. Tip 5: Disable autorun Many viruses are configured to install on to the hard drive and subsequently infect all devices you connect to the system. Consequently, uncontrolled connection of any network or external drives and even memory sticks results in further population of threats. Windows users can disable the autorun option sticking to the corresponding Microsoft’s recommendations for the Operating System version you are using. These tips are provided in Support Database entries 967715 and 967940. Tip 6: Disable image preview in Outlook (or the E-mail client you are using) An E-mail with a contagious image is sometimes a trigger for compromising one’s system. It’s advised to disable Outlook image preview to avoid that. The automatic image download function is off in the new versions of Microsoft Outlook by default. If these settings were modified, you can restore them. Go to ‘Tools’ – ‘Trust Center’, select ‘Automatic download’ and pick the following option: ‘Don’t Download Pictures Automatically In HTML E-Mail Messages or RSS’. Tip 7: Avoid pushing links in E-mail letters and opening attachments Windows users are being constantly reminded to refrain from doing the above operations. But still, people tend to often disregard such valuable recommendations. Having received a letter from friends or colleagues or one that simply looks attractive, some users may forget about caution following the links and opening potentially harmful attachments. Meantime, you must not blindly trust E-mails even from a reliable source. A single click on a contagious attachment suffices to get the whole system infested in minutes, concurrently endangering other computers on the network and losing important personal data. Any attachments can be checked for viruses with a professional antivirus tool. Also, instead of thoughtlessly pushing links in E-mail you might want to consider opening the web browser and manually pasting the site’s URL in the address bar. Tip 8: Use your browser’s defense add-ons A lot of today’s antivirus and anti-spyware applications come as a bundle to browser plug-ins enabling the prevention of automatic malicious software download, protection against phishing (attempt to wheedle out personal, financial and other private data under the pretence of filling out some online forms on allegedly secure pages) and other similar frauds. Some browser add-ons let you stay away from dangerous sites by matching the URL with the database of known scam pages. These functions should definitely be used when you are online. These plug-ins should be kept on unless they prevent your browser from working smooth. Same applies to blocking pop-ups and splash windows, which is enabled in Internet Explorer 8, the Google bar and other popular add-ons. Tip 9: Use hardware firewall There is an ongoing discussion in the IT community about advantages of hardware firewall as compared to the software firewall, and vice versa. Hardware firewall may interfere with the regular use of network printers and other shared services. In that case, it may make sense to shut them down temporarily. Nevertheless, a reliable hardware firewall can become your good partner in providing system security. It enables you to protect your system from a whole set of vulnerabilities, viruses, worms and malicious traffic. Unfortunately, the embedded Windows firewall, as well as other software firewalls, is insufficient for getting protection against the numerous automated attacks overwhelming all nodes connected to the Internet. Tip 10: Enable DNS protection The Internet connection expands the scope of potential IT security risks. The greatest threat emanates from malicious software automatically installing itself from compromised web pages and quickly crawling all over the system or the entire corporate network. Another issue has to do with DNS (Domain Name System) attacks when a contaminated DNS server redirects the user to fake and unsafe websites. The ISP’s (Internet Service Provider’s) infected servers tend to map harmless and legit URLs with modified IP addresses (e.g. 11.22.33.44). There is an effective method to guard oneself from all these threats. The user should change the DNS service functioning principle. It may take a tech expert to arrange this but basically the OpenDNS service offers free DNS options to use for user protection against phishing, spyware and other widespread web perils.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 10:46:24 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015