Network Security

Posts Tagged ‘computer viruses’

Computer virus is simply a disruptive code or computer program that are made with malicious intend by its' creator. Most of malware aka virus variants are capable to cause fatal damages to an infected computer and blocking your access to a security websites where you can find help. Some of malicious codes capable to download even more malicious threats into a system without your permission and display lots of unwanted advertising popups. Computer virus can attack your PC without your knowledge and the infection can happens while you are watching video on the web, downloading files or writing a blog post.

A virus can also attack at any fixed time and infect a PC when the time arrives. There are hundreds to thousands variants of virus such as spyware, Trojan, dialer and rootkit and each one of these viruses has hundreds to thousands of species. Since there are too many computer infections that can put your computer system into trouble, I would like to emphasize some security guide:

Never open e-mail attachments unless you know for sure who it's from and that it's safe. Some mail programs will even ask if you trust the attachment and if you're sure this you want to do. Your computer system program can also scan attachments for malware. The danger is that when the attachment is opened the virus can attach itself to your hard drive and damage files. Not only that, it can search your saved e-mail addresses and send itself out to your friends, business partners and whoever is on the list, masking the message to look like a legitimate one from you. It will probably have an attachment too and when opened will infect other computers.

It is common for many users that visit the Internet frequently to download some files such as videos, musics, ebooks, software and games. It is recommended as security measure to scan for the downloaded files before you opening them. Some file hosting service that offer downloads mention if the files are save for you to get them into your PC. Some download may contains malware, most notably spyware and adware. These variants of malicious threat capable to monitor your habits while browsing the Internet and deliver stupid popups or spam emails with advertisements in them.

Thus you should take extra caution to prepare your computer from online malware attacks. In order to prevent the malicious threats to infect your PC, few things should be done, as mentioned below:

* Please update you antispyware, antivirus or other security tools regularly with the latest malware definitions update file. This can be done manually or automatically.

* Check to see if your Internet service provider has tools to stop viruses before they can reach your mailbox.

* Use CD-R, removable storage drive, USB pen drive, online storage solution or other types of media to backup your files and important documents.

* Scan for downloaded software for malicious threat with antivirus or antispyware before getting it installed.

* Set your security settings at the highest level.

The the settings of your email and web browsing software such as Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.

In order to keep your computer to run smoothly and your security tools are up to date, please make sure that the security measures are done at least on weekly basis.

Tarmizi Ramly is a computer security blogger. He regularly publishes guides to help users in removing malware at Spyware How To.