What are Viruses?
Viruses are
basically malicious programs that when launched attack your computer
in various different ways as well as spread themselves
and infect any computer on a network that lacks the proper protection. Opening infected email attachments or
opening infected
files downloaded from the Internet can release these viruses into
your computer and any other unprotected computers on your network.
They can even spread to computers of friends and colleagues who's email addresses
are stored on your computer. Once released these viruses execute
whatever payload they were designed to onto the infected computer or
computers. Some virus' are designed to cripple certain functions
of a computer. Sometimes they are designed to delete certain files
or even the entire hard drive of a computer. They can even
completely disable
antivirus software that has not been properly maintained.
What are
Spyware and Adware?
In the last 5 years or so its spyware and adware that have become
the more prevalent nuisance with users. Sometimes the words spyware
and adware are used interchangeably. While neither of these are viruses in the traditional sense and usually aren't designed
to replicate and spread themselves to other computers they can cause
all sorts of major headaches on whatever computer they are on and
getting infected with these things is quite easy actually. Easier
than getting a traditional virus. Spyware secretly installs itself on your
computer and basically hides while doing its dirty work such as such
as steal information stored on your computer like credit card numbers
and other personal information or by actually logging whatever you
type on your keyboard. It then secretly sends this information off to whoever it was designated
to using your own Internet connection.
Adware on the other hand, while less malicious, can be almost as
damaging. Its main purpose is to force advertising on you
when you are surfing the web such as when you get those random popup
windows advertising products. Sometimes these ads are for products
that actually claim to try to help you get rid of adware and spyware
and try to get you to buy their products. Also adware can
actually take control of your web browser and force pages to appear
that you never requested. While spyware and adware are not generally designed to cause
problems with your computer, in almost all cases that is just what
they do. Slow operation, loss of web access, total loss of Internet access
and even loss of the ability to boot into Windows are common.
Whatever their payloads, viruses and spyware/adware can do alot of damage so
protecting yourself from them is very important. With permanent
high-speed Internet connections, susceptibility to these is even
more of a problem, so good virus and spyware/adware protection is priority.
Most new antivirus software programs have some degree of spyware/adware protection as
well. There are also programs devoted to only spyware/adware protection.
While having these sort of programs protecting your computer will
certainly severely reduce your chance of infection they do not
eliminate it. And if you have these programs but do not properly
maintain them they will ultimately lose their ability to protect you
at all. While both virus infections and spyware/adware infections
can make the lives of home users miserable, if this occurs in a
business environment, that can have catastrophic effects. The
potential loss of data can be quite costly not to mention the costly
downtime to your business while the damage from these infections is
repaired.
How can Kidbrook help?
If you
happen to get infected with either viruses or spyware/adware, removing them
can be quite complicated and time consuming. We are experts at their
removal and repairing the damage they may leave behind. And once we
have you up and running again we will explain and then help you set
up a good plan of protection to reduce the chances of it happening
again. |
