Students are using USB thumbdrives to carry a lot of their work between school and home, but those handy devices might accidentally carry a virus that could infect another computer if the user isn’t careful.

“I know the antivirus is supposed to be doing its job. It’s like a security net, you know there’s something there to protect [the computer],” said Tyler Tzech, a student at Lethbridge College.

Having an antivirus program as a primary means of protection on any computer in today’s world is important, but people should be careful not to solely rely on it to be reactive to possible threats. We need to be proactive to prevent any problems in the first place.

“User behavior is important. Don’t go to sites that seem to be faulty or phishing for something. That’s as important as the software itself, I think,” says Tyson Wiebe, who works in the Library Commons at Lethbridge College.

Websites that look real in every sense, but are in fact only imitating reputable websites, such as eBay or YouTube, and are designed to collect personal information for malicious purposes. This technique is called ‘phishing’, as in fishing for information.

Being proactive against internet threats such as viruses and spyware can help prevent incidents such as the Lethbridge College virus outbreak in 2004.

“The last one was September of 2004,and I think it was called ‘Blaster’,” recalls Dean Johnson, manager of network services at Lethbridge College.

According to a message sent to IT managers at the time of the outbreak in 2004, “the Help Desk received calls from various areas on-campus that some staff/faculty computers were popping-up with virus alerts.” “The problem was limited to the staff/faculty areas and the academic labs were only seeing a slow-down of network/Internet traffic.”

The message continued to explain that computers located around the college campus were tested and cleaned if infected. It took a few days to locate and clean staff and student computers, an experience the college quickly learned from.

“We now have a McAfee server that forces updates to all college owned computers, so this type of problem has not happened since then,” says Johnson.

Users should make it a habit to make sure their antivirus is updated and that anything going from their computer to another computer is virus-free, but the most important thing of all is to be smart about what you download and the websites you visit.

SIDEBAR:

Partial source: techguylabs.com

1. Don’t open email attachments

2. Don’t click links in email.

3. Don’t download files from places you aren’t absolutely sure are safe.

4. Update your Operating System regularly!

5. Use a firewall (hardware router).

6. Never run as an administrator

7. Use an effective and updated antivirus program

Originally posted 2008-12-04 18:34:18. Republished by Blog Post Promoter