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42%
of businesses infected by virus
A
recent government survey of UK businesses using email found
that up to 42% had suffered a virus infection as a result.
These
businesses reported loss of reputation and data as being the
most costly consequences of the infection.
Internet
slows to a crawl
Regular
reporting of the massive effects of virus infections appears
in the UK press. In January this year the Slammer worm brought
the Internet to its knees as the massive traffic it generated
slowed Internet servers to a crawl and choked bandwidth across
continents.
In
May 2003
the sobig.C mass-mailing worm made headline news. Although
it won’t damage files it will email itself out to every
address it finds in your address book. It purports to come
from a Microsoft address and as usual it is designed to infect
computers using Microsoft mail clients.
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Worms,
trojans and virus
But
many virus are much more harmful and contain malicious programs
which disable your anti virus software.
They
can search your hard disk for password files, transmit the
results over the Internet and leave your network vulnerable
to intruders. They can locate and transmit stored credit card
details. And much more.
Update
your anti virus software
Many
businesses are aware of the risks and have anti virus software
installed. Many of them do not update that software regularly
and many new virus and variants emerge every week.
Anti
virus products are available which update themselves when
you connect to the Internet. This provides you with protection
as soon as it becomes available.
Worryingly
many businesses have no data backups and in the event of a
virus infection which destroys files they suffer greatly.
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