Computer Viruses
and other people's use of your computers

Lately, there has been (in my viewpoint) a rash of too much televisionwatching, a majority of parents with no idea of how to raise their children tobe able to accomplish their own goals, psychiatric drugs and their less dangerouscousins, the street drugs. These helped to bring about the recent adoption ofthe all-important "I" or "ME First" attitudesand the loss of the viewpoint of "Oh yes, there are others around me thatI may want to live, work and play with."

Because of this, there are more people these days who waste theirtime and energy on attempts to destroy other people's computer data rather thanattain the goals they once had when they were young. This situation is unfortunate,but currently a fact of all computer user's lives and therefore cannot be ignored.

Currently, there are two major types of external intrusion intoyour systems due to the above:

(1) COMPUTER VIRUSES
Viruses are programs created with the intention of anything from harmless pranksto out-and-out destruction of your hard-worked on data, your complete operatingsystem and/or your motherboard. These are usually acquired by running a programwith the virus already attached to it.

Please note: This can be a program or, yes, even an email youdownloaded from the Internet, received from a friend on a floppy, CD or otherdisk or even bought from a respected (or otherwise) retailer.

Once run, depending on the virus, any other program run in thatsession will most likely be corrupted with the virus, along with the first partof your hard drive which is read when powering up your system. This last actionensures that the virus will always be in memory and able to infect any programyou run.

Most small businesses are aware enough to have installed anti-virussoftware, however, most of you do not know that there are some 1-200 new virusesPER MONTH, and so, do not get your virus data files updated. This can cause majortrouble down the road, especially if your backup system fails you or (hopefullynot true) doesn't exist.

(2) TROJANS
The purpose of a Trojan is just as it was in the days of the Greek and Trojanwar. To get the enemy into your "camp" without your knowledge and doanything from poking around to stealing data to wreaking general havoc or justwiping out your systems. These are generally programs that can be sent into yourcomputer once you are connected to the Internet and/or have been programmed intovarious purchased, shareware or freeware programs such as the recent event ofa famous audio player program which was sending data from your system back toit's creator's server.

The way Trojans work, you should first know that computers communicateover the Internet in a similar fashion to the FM band of your radio, the wholeband. Usually, you have many stations on your FM band to choose from, correct?Ok. It is the same on the Internet. To the tune of over 65,535 channels called"ports". These ports are for the most part relegated to various jobsby the engineers that try to standardize the Internet and how computers communicateon it. For instance, when you browse the "web" you use port 80, whenyou send email from your system you use port 25, when you receive email into yoursystem you use port 110, etc. However, not all ports are classified to what theirpurpose is or will be so there are a lot of "free" ports to play with.

Now, let us say that you want to communicate to another computer.You can use any of those free ports to send another system data, if that systemwas found to be accepting data on that port. And since most small business usersdon't know any better, they have no firewall (software or hardware to keep intrudersout of your systems) or anti-trojan software installed on their systems.

For example, here is a typical situation:
An office decides it wants "fast Internet access" and orders a DSL orcable connection to the Internet with an Internet connection for every systemon the network. Speed is nice, believe me, but this office is now wide open onaround 60,000 ports to the outside world - on each computer connected to the Internetin this manner or many others - including modem connections! Not a pretty picturein the security crew's eyes I assure you.

How can your systems be protected? Most current anti-virus softwareprotects your computers against some 45,000+ viruses, however, most current anti-virussoftware do not protect you against the 300+ Trojans.

We can help.

SOLUTION
Computer Technology Solutions. can install and maintain name-brand software that willprotect your systems against Trojans and viruses. The typical cost of a set ofthese software for the average Microsoft Windows PC system is only around $30-$90.00depending on the brand of software and installation which would usually take lessthan a 20 minutes for both packages per system. Depending on your network, setupand configuration may take longer. We can also keep your systems updated witha monthly service contract so that you have less of a chance of becoming a victimto either one of these programs.

Call us today for a free quote!

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