virus warning

mum2boys83

hello,
not sure if this is the right place but its the only forum ive found about the internet.


on the news recently a story about a cyber attack. this does worry me as I love my internet and don't want a virus on in.


so whats peoples favourite anti virus program? and what is the best hard drive to get?
thanks x

corf999

My company has been hit hard by this virus the last few weeks and even the latest (todays) Mcafee signatures are not picking up the variant we have been hit with.

We are providing mcafee with copies of the virus but it has encrypted the entire Corporate network file shares and caused significant disruption while the data was restored.

To be honest the AV companies are always playing catchup and if you are hit with a new variant you will unlikely to be to prevent it.

It as usual was human error when some silly member of staff clicked on an email link when offsite connected to the internet but not protected by the corporate vpn and proxy. Then she kindly connected the laptop to the corporate network......

corf999

I use Kaspersky because I get it free from my bank.

Comodo or Avast are often the favourite freebees

A.Penny.Saved

Your best bet for protection is to sandbox your brower! Then no matter what, if any drive by malware ie ads on some sites or flash attempt to install malware, it only gets as far as the sandbox and cannot alter important system files or the registry.

I have been using this method for years and I have not encountered any problems even with the massive amount of time that I often spend online which probably dwarfs most people's usage.

BTW I use Win 7 x64 SP1 with Sandboxie. It can be more awkward with regard to downloading anything or download managers which get invoked by the browser and hence are also sandboxed. The files all get saved to the sandbox and need to be retrieved OR the folders added to the quick recovery feature. Installing any browser extensions, updating flash and stuff like that needs to be thought about because they will be installed only to the sandbox unless the browser is run temporarily outside it. Bookmarks need to dealt with so they are not lost, an online backup can do this. Deleting the sandbox or clearing should be done occasionally to ensure that nothing is hidden in the sandbox and influencing your browsing because the browser behaves like it would so while it is running, malware can still do as it would but not affect your system or files.

If you got that encrypting malware it would encrypt the files into the sandbox which could grow very large while the malware attempted to encrypt the whole hard drive. It would not affect the real files on the hard drive but would need to be terminated and the files in the sandbox deleted. The files outside the sandbox would be unaffected!

A small price to pay for safety IMO. If only it was not all necessary!

A.Penny.Saved

BTW I run multiple browsers all sandboxed. One for online purchases and online banking etc where I go straight to the sites and not using google etc

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

I got a virus warning in 1999. Not had one since. My own company uses McCafe. Installed on each machine and a firewalled server.

all emails are scanned and attachments destryoyed at the server. It costs money, but eeigh this against data loss and company cobginustion