MALWARE- Tips to protect your computer from various types of malware

MALWARE

How to help prevent Malicious software Attacks?

Malware is a category of malicious code that includes viruses, worms, and Trojan horses.
Destructive malware will utilize popular communication tools to spread, including worms sent through email and instant messages,
Trojan horses dropped from web sites, and virus-infected files downloaded from peer-to-peer connections- like torrents. some social networks, etc. that actually open unprotected ports to your system.

Malware will also seek to exploit existing vulnerabilities on systems making their entry quiet and easy. As such, it is vital to accept updates to your operating system and security software, as soon as theses patches become available to fix the latest known threats to your system.

How Do You Know?
Malware works to remain unnoticed, either by actively hiding or by simply not making its presence on a system known to you. Conficker and Stuxnet are examples. A quality Internet Security program will eliminate these infections automatically.

What To Do?

1.- Only open email or IM attachments that come from a trusted source and that are expected. 2.- Have email attachments scanned by an Internet Security program prior to opening Delete all unwanted messages without opening.

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3.- Only transfer files from a well known source to others after scanning them with your Internet Security program. This will help you from spreading bad files to your colleagues and friends. In addition, this will help block unsolicited outbound communication initiated without your knowledge by automated bots.

4.- Keep security virus definition updates up to date. We suggest putting your Internet Security on automatic to get the latest updates immediately for Window, Apple OS and your Internet Security program. Most of the free programs do not have this important feature or do not do it very well.

5.- Do not click on Web links sent by someone you do not know If a person on your Buddy list is sending strange messages, files, or web site links, terminate your IM session. Then, clear your cache memory, especially after banking or buying on-line.

Look to your browser to spot malware sites it flags as dangerous or untested or you can check it yourself with a free service like SafeWeb before diving in.

6.- Scan all files with an Internet Security program before transferring them to your system.
This includes all diskettes, CD's, USB drives or extra hard drives, etc. and files downloaded before installing them. We download them to a separate directory to make sure we scan them all.