EFS Network Management

Protect yourself from viruses and infections. Viruses are proving very costly in time to get rid of and can slow Internet traffic down. This is from the large number of infected computers around the world sending out spam and collecting personal information. Please make sure that you have the following updated:

• Apply all Critical Updates from Microsoft Office and the Operating System.
• Keeping returning to Microsoft update site until no more updates are detected.
• Ensure that you have applied XP Service Pack 3. It is known that SP3 has issues with computers the have ATI display adapters and cause the video resolution to degrade.
• For older Office software older than Office 2003 (Office 2002 and 2000) you will have to manually download the updates as they are not on the Microsoft's Update site and can be found at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads
• Update your Anti-Virus protection to the latest release
• Install and Update your Anti-Spyware (i.e. Spybot Search and Destroy) Found at http://www.safer-networking.org. Update it and Immunize your computer by clicking on the Immunize button.
• Discontinue the use of IE6.0 and upgrade to IE 7.0 or switch to the latest version of FireFox. If you are using FireFox now upgrade to the latest version.
• Turn on Anti-Phishing in your browser

Not having one or more of these tasks completed may lead to a serious infection. IF you feel that your Internet connection has slowed down or you get a letter from your ISP stating the a computer inside your network is sending out large volumes of spam then you may have a computer infected. If you have done all the above, scanned all computers both in regular mode and safe mode, there is a possibility that you might have one or more computers still infected as this new virus is very well written, is very stealthily and does not degrade the performance of the computer that the user can notice.

It is suspected that the virus is being controlled by organized crime and is also looking for personal information, passwords, credit card info as well as banking information. If you suspect infection discontinue the use of that computer (turn it off) and reset all passwords associated with any service that was used while the virus was on the computer.

For company administrators that wish to do a check I have a utility that I can email you that will reveal the virus activity. I can talk you though how to use it in a matter of minutes. It only show the presents of the virus. Getting rid of is the hard part.