Keep it Clean: Viruses: They're Not Just for Desktops Anymore Rogers AR

Posted by : Maggie Biggs

"I just don't understand it!" Dave told me frantically over the phone. "We have antivirus software on our systems over here, yet we continue to get infected with viruses. We've spent hours and hours scanning our drives. What can we do?"Dave's predicament happens to many small and medium-size businesses, as well as to users running home networks. "Dave, when you say you have antivirus software on your systems, what exactly do you mean?" I asked.

"Well," he replied, "We're running either Norton Antivirus or McAfee on all our PCs."

"But what about your file servers, e-mail servers, and other things like scanning files that you might be downloading?" I queried. As it turned out, Dave's business had indeed installed virus-scanning software on its desktop machines. However, the software had been configured only to scan the hard drives of each PC weekly for viruses. Real-time virus scanning was not enabled.

As it was configured, Dave's antivirus protection was really almost no defense at all. Viruses were able to manifest themselves on Dave's systems and, through file sharing, continuously propagate themselves. In short, Dave's computing environment was seriously antivirus-challenged.

What about you? Do you only run antivirus software on end-user desktops? And how is that desktop antivirus software configured? Every company or home network will be slightly different, but at a minimum you need antivirus technologies that can work in real...

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