Get Real About Virus Protection

Recently, I was reading one of my favorite message boards and found an interesting post. The author had just been inconvenienced by the Klez virus. It had spread through his office and caused some damage before being eradicated. He said he didn't use virus scanners because normally he didn't use Microsoft products. Interestingly, others on the board agreed with him, saying they did not use Outlook, Outlook Express or Windows and thus were safe.

Um, guys, get real. Sorry for being so blunt, but it's getting nasty out there in the world of viruses. It's a complete myth that the only way to get a virus is through outlook or Microsoft products. Yes, that's the current fad, but the first viruses were on Unix and VMS, the first really big worm was in 1988 way before Windows was popular, and there are virus scanners on the Mac for a reason.

Five years ago a Mac virus ripped through my office. How was it passed? Floppy disks.

In the company that I work for, I manage almost a thousand servers and workstations. Every single one of these systems has a virus scanner. Our stores (about 200 of them) have McAfee on their systems, and the office systems have Norton. Our SMTP email gateways have yet a third scanner system, and our internal servers also virus scan. In addition, we've got everything up to patch and have outlook set to maximum protection.

We have Macintosh and these are protected with their own virus scanners. And yes, they do occasionally trap viruses.

Our SMTP gateway virus scanners block as many as a thousand email viruses a day. A few get through to the exchange servers, which block about a dozen a day. Once in a while, one gets through to the desktop (one a week or so).

Why all this paranoia? We had one breach a few years ago, "I Love You", which cost a hundred man hours to eradicate. At that time, I decided "never again". Since I'm in charge and had the authority, I made it so.

As I said, at the moment Windows is the current popular target (primarily due to some really idiotic design decisions made by Microsoft on some of their products), but as Linux and other operating systems become more popular they will become bigger and bigger targets. As will other applications.

I my humble opinion, based upon 25 years of experience in the computer field, not owning and maintaining a virus scanner is living on borrowed time.

Additional Information

Backing Up Your stuff - Part 1 Backup may seem to be a pain, but it's one of the most important things that you can do to protect your system.
Backing up your system is an essential part of your security scheme Backups are extremely critical to keep your system secure. If your system is damaged by a virus or an intruder you have a way to recover. Remember, however, that you must think through and test your scheme.
Outlook Security Patch If you run Outlook and you want to protect yourself, you should install the Outlook security patch.
Products - Norton Antivirus You need antivirus protection for your computer. Norton Antivirus is by far and away the best solution for the desktop.
Products - ZoneAlarm Pro ZoneAlarm Pro is quite possibly the best firewall product for personal home use that currently exists. Highly recommended.
Viruses The most important thing you can do to protect your system is install a virus checker (also known as an anti-virus program). These programs will scan your system for viruses and Trojan horses and delete or repair them. There are several products including those by McAfee and Norton (Symantec).