Page 5 of 7
So what is a person to do? How do we keep this
possibility from becoming a probability?
Number 1 - Update your anti-virus definition
files daily! If you can, update them twice or
thrice daily. If your anti-virus software doesn’t
let you automatically (i.e. no manual intervention)
get updates daily, then get a software that
does, such as Grisoft’s
AVG. Interestingly, out-of-the-box installations
of most anti-virus software only check for updates
weekly. Symantec’s
Corporate Edition is one such example. So
what happens when you get an update on Friday
morning, but the virus hits on Monday? Your
next update isn’t till Wednesday, so you’re
left vulnerable. Most interestingly, the latest
viruses also seemed to have Trojan-horsed the
Symantec Anti-Virus Corporate Edition. While
news has been fairly quiet about this, I have
personally encountered more than 5 networks
where scanning with Symantec after getting the
latest definition files shows the system as
being clean, yet removing the Symantec client
and installing a different anti-virus software
reveals the virus to still be on the system.
*** Note to all Anti-Virus Software Manufacturers:
You should code your software to allow hands-off,
multiple times daily, updates of anti-virus
definition files. I recognize that your bandwidth
is important, so you default updates to be daily
or weekly. But as consumers, we don’t
care about your bandwidth needs. We want to
know that we are as updated as we can be. We’ll
pay the monthly or yearly subscription prices,
but you need to give us options. As of the time
of this writing, the only anti-virus software
I know that allows for multiple-times-per-day
updates is Trend
Micro’s Corporate Edition.
Number 2 - All sysadmins supporting Windows-based
networks should ensure that all clients get
all “Critical Updates” and “Service
Packs” at least weekly. Whether this is
done via the Microsoft
SUS or hands-on at each system, this must
be done. For updates to servers, a test server
(a PC running the server OS when budgets are
tight) should be used to QA. Testing updates
for one or two weeks to ensure compatibility
is foolish. (Of course, location specific exceptions
are expected, but use some common sense. Ask
yourself, “is it better to QA this for
just 2 days and risk the application being down
for a day or is it better to have my whole company
offline”?
*** Note to Microsoft: In the same way that
anti-virus software connects to the software
company’s website and looks for updates
immediately upon installation, Windows OSs need
to do the same thing. When a home user re-installs
from the “original CD” (which could
be a year or two old), the OS should look for
an internet connection, and if found, take the
user to the Windows Update site and get all
the critical updates and service packs). This
is MORE IMPORTANT than the “Welcome to
Windows” tutorials and Beck music that
we presently get after a re-install. It is even
more important than registering our newly installed
systems. After all, do you care if I register
a system that’s about to take part in
a DDoS against Microsoft.com?
<previous><next>
1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 6
- 7
