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Protect Your Company - Protect Yourself
Importance of Virus Protection
By Suzzanne Stanford, CCE CEW

"Imagine multiple email offers being sent from your computer, attaching private random documents, using your company's return address with your name as their representative. Your organization's reputation is vulnerable and so are you as their employee!"

I've been battling with the results of two different computer viruses over the last three weeks. They are malicious and destructive. Although viruses have been around for a long time, this is the first time I've been on the receiving end. Several large companies in the computer industry recently sent mandatory warnings to all of their employees out in the field. "Keep up with the latest virus protection. Comply or face dismissal!"

Here's what happened to me and why virus protection is important:

I work "out in the field". One day I opened my email and there was a warning from Earthlink that my mailbox was full . . . that all new incoming email would be rejected. Normally this wouldn't be a problem but email is crucial to some of what I do for my clients. I discovered that several people had a virus that was going through their email address book, creating a simple message and attaching "random documents" from their computer . . . over and over and over. Imagine a virus snatching a random document from your computer and forwarding it out to people in your address book. What if that document is private? Within 2 hours of resetting my POP account on Earthlink's server, there were 13MB of new documents. The documents were copying themselves over and over and over. I tried to contact each stranger, usually through their company website and warn them that they had a virus. Even my cousin was involved. It's now been 8 weeks and the documents keep coming. The SirCam Virus?

Two weeks ago while travelling with my laptop I was surprised to discover 600 angry email messages waiting for download. The Code Red II virus? Actually we're still not sure if this was a malicious act or a real virus. My alias forwarding address as "webmaster", was being used by either a virus or a malicious person to send out a bogus "special offer" to people at AOL . . . over and over and over. The "Code Red II" virus uses a company's mail server if they don't have specific protection for it. The email looked official and directed people to our company website. It must have been very bad because people were going to our site and hunting down the "opt-out" form. Their messages were angry and not repeatable. I would attempt to reach those who were threatening to take us to court. Some people didn't believe me. We were forced to put a "Spam Mail Alert" on the main page of our site linking to an explanation. It's been five days since we've received an angry email from someone at AOL. We took the Spam Alert off today. Is it over?

Fortunately I did not have a virus on my computer. Now this is not saying much. Although I have protection I wasn't downloading the updates. Some people are holding off and think it can't happen to them. Not so. The viruses are escalating. They can destroy your hard drive; are you backed up? Consider installing a personal firewall. Imagine multiple email offers being sent from your computer, attaching private random documents, using your company's return address with your name as their representative. Your organization's reputation is vulnerable and so are you as their employee.

Here are two companies that can help:
www.symantec.com
and us.mcafee.com/default.asp. Both sites have free virus checking service. For more information go to www.yahoo.com and search for "computer+virus". Good Luck!

 
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