Where do viruses come from? For the most part, viruses infect your computers from three places: the Internet, email, and USB thumb drives. If you protect your business against these, you can prevent a problem before it ever starts.

Anti-virus software gives businesses a false sense of security because it makes employees think that they are safe and free to roam on the Internet and open mysterious emails without fear. WRONG! Computers get infected even with anti-virus software and the total costs of using workstation-based anti-virus software are much higher than they seem. Apple Macs included.

For a small business, Anti-Virus for individual workstations can be quite expensive.  A basic 1-year subscription will run you about $30-$50 per person.  Having an office of 30 employees puts this price at about $900-$1500 a year.

This might be all well and good if that were the end of the story.  But experience tells us it’s not the end of the story.  In a case study that we performed, we found that malware and viruses on a regular basis were STILL infecting employees’ workstations and there were many HIDDEN COSTS involved with Anti-Virus installations at the workstations including:

• The time spent on installation and updates at each workstation
• The costs of an inefficient workstation being bogged down by the constant scanning of the workstation’s files
• The cost of time being wasted on the very real possibility of not being able to access valid and important data due to “false positive” prevention
• The costs to rid an infection by a technical engineer
• The opportunity costs of an employee not being able to work
• The potential costs of losing intellectual property
• The risk of damaging the company’s external image to their clients

Is there a better solution? Yes. You can prevent viruses by introducing protection across the entire business rather than at the workstation level. This is a four-part solution:

• A security audit – a review of the current systems to ensure that there are no vulnerabilities
• A cultural change – employee training on what to watch-out for and how to avoid problems
• A firewall preventing employees from accessing problematic websites – with laser precision we can block certain sites from general employee use; this will increase productivity and prevent problems; management can be excluded from these firewalls allowing you to tailor the solution to fit your company needs
• Back-ups easily accessible and ready to be installed – ensure that your back-ups are ready for action

By preventing viruses at the business-level rather than at the workstation, you can free up every workstation to operate at its computing power and increase productivity at the same time. If you want to learn more, contact me here: http://www.rendezviewinc.com/contact-us/

-jdg, RendezView

INFECTION INCLUDES and are not limited to any Network Drives, Shared Drives, Drop Box Connections and drives, USP Thumb drives and external drives that are connected to the computer that becomes infected.  The files (which also can be Word, Excel, and picture files (.jpg) ) are no longer usable after infection!!

This is an important reminder to be vigilant when accessing your email, especially email attachments. If you have any doubts about the email and/or attachment you should contact and confirm with the individual or company that sent you the email before opening it.

• Examples: filename.DOC changed to filename.EXE
• In particular for this virus the following files have been found:
  • Porn.EXE, Sexy.EXE, Secret.EXE
  • x.mpeg, autorun.inf

Do not click on, touch, double-click, highlight, etc. any “EXE” files.

Emails that reference Credit, Credit Cards, Bank Accounts, UPS, FedEx, etc. are almost always spam and/or contain viruses. These companies will never send you an email with an attachment.

If something looks suspicious then it is suspicious.