Anti-Virus & Security Issues

The risk from outside attack in the form of viruses, worms and intrusion from the Internet poses a major threat to small businesses. At best these can result in computer downtime, servicing costs and a general annoyance. At worst all data from a computers hard disk can become erased or a computer can be harnessed to transmit a stream of pornographic messages to clients and the outside world.

The good news is there are currently a wide variety of cost effective and even free tools to protect the small business. In this article I will highlight two products that currently offer excellent value and protection.

Firstly Norton Internet Security 2006 is an excellent software product encompassing anti-virus, firewall ( internet intrusion protection ) and anti-junk mail software. This is currently available for around £50 including a one year subscription to updates and is an ideal solution where full security on single computers is required, although businesses with five or more users should purchased the corresponding Symantec client security business software editions, especially as Norton Internet Security will not install correctly on a file server.

Secondly the D-Link 504T router offers a five in one product for the small business for under £70. This particular router contains an adsl modem ( ideal for replacing those troublesome USB broadband modems ), a broadband router with four port hub ( for sharing a fast internet connection and for networking computers ), built in firewall protection and also a VPN pass through facility ( for allowing remote access over the Internet from another computer ).

Combining these two products would provide a formidable barrier between a small business network and the many threats that are continuously making the news headlines. However for standard anti-virus protection Computer Associates E-Trust offers an excellent low cost solution, with five user packs starting from under £100 and this software also includes Windows server and mail server protection. For reference, Computer Associates single user EZ-Antivirus can be purchased on-line from http://www.itcroydon.co.uk/links.htm ).

For larger businesses additional products are available to offer complete enterprise level security and hardware firewall devices are an ideal solution for securing servers, especially where remote access is required; although newer Windows server software often has advanced firewall features included as standard.

Finally it should be noted that the Windows update utility should set to ‘automatic update’ on both servers and workstations, to ensure that the latest security patches are applied automatically. However be careful of any emails attachments purporting to contain vital security updates for your computer, because invariably these will contain viruses.

Please email support@ITCroydon.co.uk for questions or support on antivirus / security issues.