 |
 |
 |
|
|
||
| Georgia Southwestern State University |
||
|
How to Protect Your Computer from Viruses
A computer virus is a piece of software that has been written to surreptitiously enter your computer system and "infect" your files. Some viruses won't harm your system, while others can damage or destroy your data.
Typically a computer virus will replicate itself and try to infect other files. New computer viruses are being written all the time, and it's important to understand how your system can be exposed to them, and what you can do to protect your computer.
There are some malicious programs like worms and Trojan horses. For them to spread, you must, invite these programs onto your computers--for example, by opening an email attachment or downloading and running a file from the Internet. It is very important to never open an email attachment that is not expected.
Some common symptoms that could indicate your system's been infected are:
- Unusual messages or displays on your monitor
- Unusual sounds or music played at random times
- Your system has less available memory than it should
- A disk or volume name has been changed
- Programs or files are suddenly missing
- Unknown programs or files have been created
- Some of your files become corrupted or suddenly don't work properly
There are many virus protection software that will check your system for known viruses, scan incoming files, and warn you about infected files. Our standard installation includes McAfee® VirusScan® anti-virus protection software. An important fact about these programs is that they are only as good as their database of known viruses. Since new and different viruses are being introduced all the time, anti-virus databases need to be updated often.
McAfee should be configured in such a way that the virus definitions (DAT files) are updated automatically. However, it is sometimes necessary to manually update the virus definitions due to sudden virus outbreaks.