Is your antivirus software protecting you from today's computer viruses? What about tomorrow's viral specimens? In this month's newsletter, we discuss how to make sure your antivirus software is up to date --and up to the challenge.

With the highly publicized virus alerts of recent months, most companies have invested in virus protection software. However, virus-related incidents can still occur if antivirus software is not regularly updated. This happens if subscriptions are allowed to expire, or end users bypass recommended updates.

Virus protection software does require frequent updates. Designing antivirus applications to indiscriminately prevent certain operations from occurring -- like erasing or modifying files -- would be throwing the baby out with the bath water. Instead, antivirus software is told to spot new viruses by comparing each file examined to a definition file. This definition file is updated over the Internet with a paid subscription, or manually from the vendor's website. Without the latest definition file, the antivirus software will not work with many of the newest viruses.  

Aside from scheduled updates, many antivirus applications do not automatically notify users when new definition files become available. Even when they do, end users are known to skip the time-consuming download. To counter this trend, many small and midsized companies purchase distributed "push" antivirus solutions, such as the McAfee pack available with the popular SonicWall internet appliance. These solutions actually prevent users from getting on the Internet unless they first download the latest virus definition files. Continued Internet access is indeed a powerful incentive to keep virus definitions current.

There are many other antivirus solutions available depending on your network and operating system. They share a common need for frequent updates. As with computer security in general, virus prevention is a day-to-day, ongoing battle.

Guy R.