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Securing Your Stand Alone Or Network Node Machine

Virus protection

Viruses are programs which are copied onto your computer, usually unwittingly, when you a.) access a floppy disk which you don't know the origins of, or b.) download files from the Internet. There are other methods of getting viruses but these two probably account for 95% of all virus infections (but see Worms/Trojan horses below). The best defence is an efficient virus program which you can get updates for over the Internet - this saves the cost of having to get updates by disk. Most anti-virus programs have a facility to constantly monitor your computer as it accesses files. This can tend to slow the operation of the machine and even cause problems to other software such as printer drivers.

General advice:- DON'T HAVE MORE THAN ONE ANTI-VIRUS PROGRAM INSTALLED AND RUNNING AT ONE TIME. It is usually pointless as one good, up to date one is sufficient and having a number of monitoring software packages (anti-virus, so called PC 'health' software, etc.) installed and running will usually cause problems at some point with conflicts between them, particularly if they're supplied by different companies.

If you are just using a machine solely on a stand-alone basis by one person, maybe with a set of disks just used to back up data you can run a virus check every week or every month but if the constant monitoring doesn't cause any problems what's the point.

Also have your virus checker check for macro viruses which can be run from most major software packages, i.e. Microsoft Word, Excel, etc. Again, these are programs written in the macro language of the particular package, i.e. Microsoft Word.

I have deliberately not suggested a virus scanner as there are many to choose from including some free ones. It is likely you will have one from a CD or DVD on the front of a computer magazine. If you get stuck and have access to the internet have a look at www.download.com and type the word virus into the search box at the top. Personally I use the AVG virus scanner available from www.grisoft.com but that's only because there is a free version available and I am mean :)

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