30DISC – Days 5&6 – Weekend Project #1

Weekend! Days off? Nope!

Today’s challenge – Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware – Direct Link to Guide Page

This challenge is straight forward but also could be time consuming, depending on how much data is stored on your computer. It is also one of the easiest and cheapest things you can do to secure your data: installing, updating and regularly running anti-virus and anti-malware software.

What’s the difference between a virus and malware? Good question, and in reality, it’s a slightly circular answer. Most people have heard of a computer virus, not nearly as many will have heard of malware. Malware is a portmanteau of “malicious software” and is a catchall term for all types of software that are designed to do things to your computer or data that is unlikely to be in your best interests. A computer virus is one type of malware: it “infects” your computer, does it’s damage (it can take various forms) and then tries to replicate itself and spread to other systems (just like a biological virus).

Other types of malware are things like: keyloggers, adware, trojans, cryptolockers and and spyware. For a good summary, check out this link.

Viruses have been around from the very beginning of computing, and as with most things, they started out quite benign until bad people figured out they could make money with them. Now it’s an arms race between malware producers and anti-virus and anti-malware software companies. Whilst anti-virus and anti-malware software are not 100% protection against infections, they are an absolute minimum requirement for computer security.

Justin recommends in his blog the Avast anti-virus and Malwarebytes software packages. These are great free options, but they also produce very good premium options, and if you use the software I would encourage you to give the developers some money for their services.

If you already have an anti-virus and anti-malware solution, check out the relative effectiveness of that solution at AV Test, an independent website dedicated to ongoing testing and comparison of anti-virus and anti-malware solutions.

Geoffrey: I have been using Avira anti-virus software for about 10 years and haven’t had an infection in that time so I highly recommend it, based on a sample of one. I use Spybot Search & Destroy for anti-malware and have found it to also be very good.

Juan and Priscilla: Both of these two have Kaspersky Endpoint Security installed on their machines as part of their corporate IT program. Happily both were up-to-date with the latest versions of the software and anti-virus definitions. Both simply kicked off a full system scan and reported that no threats were found!

Diana: Many Mac users are under the impression that there are no viruses for Macs, which is simply not true – because of the very low market share for Apple computers, it wasn’t commercially viable for virus writers to create malicious software for the Mac. As Apple’s share of the desktop computing market has increased over the past few years, so has the relative attractiveness of writing viruses for the platform. The number of Mac viruses has significantly increased over the past few years so it certainly behooves you to have an anti-virus solution in place. Diana’s Mac shipped with a copy of Symantec Norton Security which rates well in AV Test. She also was up-to-date with her definitions and a full system scan showed no threats.

This weekend challenge was pretty straight forward for all of us, but it took me nearly a day to run a full system scan.

Previous Days Here:
Day 0 – Introduction to the Team
Day 1 – Installing Operating System and Application Updates
Day 2 – Set Up A Standard User Account
Day 3 – Review Privacy Settings
Day 4 – Setup Private & Secure Email