The Grapevine PC News - Jan/Feb/Mar | 1st Quarter (2002)
Virus Spreads: How to avoid disasters? (Continued from p.1)
by: Stanley Kaytovich
Is it the evil masterminds of the computer world? Can we honestly blame them for our network down issues and all of the money loss? Maybe partially, yes, we can blame them for their actions and for their stupidity, or even their ingenious. In my opinion, the ones to blame are administrators, but even more, the anti-virus companies. I do not know how true this is; but I have heard and read on several occasions that anti-virus companies release a lot of viruses and worms by freelance programmers to give them business; to scare people.
Administrators are to blame because it is their job to ensure that anti-virus software is loaded on workstations and especially servers. It is their job to update the anti-virus definitions often. Every day at least three new viruses are "discovered" and most of them will not do any harm, but there are those that can bring down your server, as those in the past few months, and may cause unemployment.
As mentioned earlier, I feel that anti-virus companies are even more to blame. Administrators have no one but them to rely on when a virus hits home. In my recent experience, I was disappointed in a company which has given itself the biggest name in anti-virus software, yet, very impressed with another company, which has proved it to be "more" reliable.
For example, the "Goner" virus recently hit a lot of companies. It spread itself by sending itself to everyone in the address book. Like most current viruses, it attacks through exchange servers and email. For this, it is crucial for administrators to have an email anti-virus on their mail server. Most of our clients run Symantec Norton Anti-Virus for Exchange on their mail servers. When Goner hit that morning, none of the anti-viruses had a fix until later that afternoon. I had my colleague, who was at the client site since the morning, check Symantec's website every few minutes for a patch or update.
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At the end of my work day, there was still no fix available, so I went to help my colleague out. Once I got there, I figured I would try McAfee's site and sure enough, McAfee had recently posted a fix for the virus and an update for their anti-virus software. At that time I was very impressed with McAfee since Symantec has still not posted anything on their site. This isn't the first time McAfee has proved itself to be reliable. I made a decision to download a trial version of McAfee anti-virus for mail servers. After install and an update the McAfee Anti-Virus for exchange has found and quarantined all of the files inside mailboxes.
Besides the feeling of reliability to McAfee, I found that their exchange anti-virus had many more features to administer it, as well as, better restrictions, security and versatility. In my mind I feel strongly about this product and would recommend it to anyone shopping around for an anti-virus product or may be interested in switching from another product. Reliability is their focus and they really made me see that their product was the best.
In The News
Front Page p.1
Back Up and Data Recovery p.2
by: Kamel Aouiz
Upgrade My Network p.3
by: Chris Munoz
Jan/Feb/Mar - 2002
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