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How You Can Help Stop Internet Virus Attacks |
By:
Paul Wilcox |
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How You Can Help Stop Internet Virus Attacks
Paul Wilcox
It's pretty common knowledge these days that you need to run some kind of antivirus protection on your computer. But it's not commonly known that the computers that make up the internet are also at risk. What's being done to protect them?
Viruses can attack servers that run websites, email and other internet functions. They're not limited to desktop PC's.
Most of these servers are really not all that different from the average desktop computer. They probably have more memory, bigger hard drives and faster CPUs but the underlying technology is much the same.
Because they really run the same kind of stuff as a desktop system, they're also vulnerable to attack and need to be protected with similar methods. They need to be running antivirus software and firewalls to avoid being infected.
What else can be done?
Because these servers provide internet services to many users (sometimes thousands at a time) they are a popular target for the people who create viruses. As an end user, you can help to keep these systems virus-free by ensuring that your computer stays that way. And the system administrators on those systems can help by limiting the type of software that gets installed on them.
keeping your computer protected by antivirus, firewall and other internet security software you help to minimize the target area for the attacks to hit. It can also help to keep your browser and operating system updated with the latest patches, and possibly even run an alternative browser such as Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
You should also avoid booting from CD's, DVD's or USB memory sticks that haven't been scanned for viruses. If one of the files that was saved on the disk was infected, booting with the disk can cause the virus to spread even faster.
FTP servers, used to store and provide sending and receiving of files over networks, should become a thing of the past. Vanilla ftp (File Transfer Protocol) can't be secured since passwords are passed in clear text (unencrypted) over the network where they can be picked up by sniffers. Sniffers are software and/or hardware used to spy on networks. Secure FTP versions should be used instead.
Users need to take responsibility for making sure a network is secure - not just the system administrators. System admins have many tasks on their plate and they're not always able to respond to security risks as quickly as they should.
Is your computer secure enough? Find out what you should be doing to keep it safe from spyware, viruses and other http://www.onlinesecuritytoolkit.com/ online security threats at the Online Security Toolkit website. Visit http://www.onlinesecuritytoolkit.com for more information. Click here for other http://www.uberarticles.com/?id=26297&b=79 unique 'virus' articles.
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Article Source: http://www.statssheet.com/articles/article61343.html |
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