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Anti Virus Good Practice Guide |
Main Index Tips and Tweaks Free Virus Removal RescueME
The PC Triangle for safe computing
Install Critical Updates from Microsoft for Windows. Install Office updates from Microsoft, install any other relevant software updates from your software provider, this helps to reduce the risk of virus infection and prevents certain virus’s from even working.
Ensure you have a firewall installed and working, this helps prevent you from getting certain virus’s and limits what others can do once your infected.
Ensure that you have Anti-Virus software installed and up to date, AV software will only find new virus’s if it has the necessary information to tell it what it’s looking for. Anti-Virus software removes virus’s and stops them from running on your PC.
No matter how good the above is done, it can still be undone by the user.
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Here are some common sense rules which everyone should follow to prevent being infected by a virus and spreading one, when using e-mail or the internet. Many of the most prevalent virus's now are used by spammers to send email from YOUR PC, this means your IP address could become black-listed and you may be taken off-line.
If you receive an attachment, where you expecting one, do you know the source? All attachments should be viewed with suspicion and therefore should be scanned before opening/running them, do not rely on the On Access virus scanner which is running in the background. Save e-mail attachments in a separate folder and then scan the folder for virus’s. Even if you have sent the attachment to yourself, e-mail can become infected in transit.
If you must send Word files as attachments, save them as either .rtf or .txt, if you do not want to loose any formatting save them afterwards to a zip file. DO NOT send word files with .doc extensions these can easily become infected in transit.
Scan any media eg CD, floppy before using it.
Make sure that explorer shows all extensions by selecting "View" and "Folder Options" and then deselect "Hide file extensions for known file types". This way if someone has added an extension to a file that is an exe at the end of another extension then you will automatically be able to see the correct extension and have a little warning that all is not as it seems.
If you download anything from the web, again this must be placed in a separate folder and manually scanned, do not rely on the On Access virus scanner.
Simply visiting a compromised Web site can cause infection if certain browser vulnerabilities are not patched. Make sure you run Windows Update at least once a month. This will ensure that all critical patches for Windows and Internet Explorer are installed.
Don't install anything which pop's up whilst browsing the internet, read what it is, ask do I really need this, view it with suspicion.
If you receive a message from a friend or any other source telling you to delete a file if you find it, DON’T DO IT. This is probably a hoax trying to get you to damage to your own PC.
Or visit http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/vinfodb.html/ or http://vil.nai.com/vil/default.asp and search for the virus you have been sent in their database.
Make sure you keep your hard drive defragmented, as this will speed up the amount of time it takes to scan your hard drive. http://www.shi.com/Global/ECommerce/NewsArticleView.asp?SHIArticleID=5315
Free Anti-Virus Software:
AntiVir - http://www.free-av.com/ AVG 6 http://www.grisoft.com/ Alwil Avast http://www.avast.com/
AntiVir and Avast are free for home use, AVG can be used anywhere.
Alternatively if you don’t mind having your web browsing monitored to collect stats you can download and use Norman Anti-Virus (This is not Norton Anti-Virus) from:
http://www.opistat.com/mp/registration.html?p=53000100&id_language=530,2&country=30
For home security you should:
Keep Windows up to date with the latest patches from Microsoft
Have Anti-Virus software installed and kept up to date
Install a Firewall, this works alongside your Anti-Virus software to keep intruders out
Free Firewalls
Filseclab
Personal Firewall -
http://www.filseclab.com/eng/products/firewall.htm
Kerio
(Kerio Personal Firewall is FREE for home and personal use) -
http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html
Outpost
Firewall (version 1 is free) -
http://www.agnitum.com/download/outpost1.html
Sygate
(FREE for personal use) -
http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm
Zonealarm
Basic firewall -
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/comp...reeDownload.jsp
For testing reviews on Anti-Virus Software visit:
http://www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/antivirus/certifiedproducts.shtml
http://agn-www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/vtc/en0110.htm
http://www.av-test.org/sites/test_all.php3?lang=en&test=2001-12
Last update: 27 May 2005