Don't Threaten Me!

So far in our CIS205 class, we’ve learned about viruses, worms and other forms of malware. We've learned about phishing scams, and how to protect ourselves from identity theft. We’ve also taken a look at bot nets and their armies of zombie computers.

The more we learn about cybercrime and how it is evolving, the more obvious it becomes that it’s impossible to eliminate all threats. We can only strive to mitigate them. ‘Black hatters’ will always be one step ahead of their ‘white hatted’ counterparts. Knowing this, it’s important to take every precaution we can and to utilize every resource at our disposal in order to mitigate the risks we endure in our online lives. We must take a layered approach to security.

Simple things like, running regular windows updates, and ensuring your firewall/anti-virus is updated with the latest patches and signatures can go a long way toward protecting us from those that would seek to harm us.

The video below shows a few more ways we can protect ourselves online:

Below is a video by Symantec about fake anti-virus scams. This software is often called 'ransomware'.



The video posted above should not be taken as an endorsement by me for Symantec products. There are many choices for security suites and it is up to you to research and find the software that fits your individual needs. Personally, I use ESET Smart Security:

I like ESS because it is easy to install and configure, basically set-it-and-forget-it. It's also very feature rich but stays out of my way at the same time. It runs in the background unnoticed, and seems lighter on system resources than some programs I've tried in the past.

Now, as I said in the beginning, there’s no way to protect against everything. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, we may find ourselves at the mercy of a stubborn virus or some form of malware that we just can’t seem to get rid of. Personally, in cases like this, I prefer to wipe the hard drive and perform a fresh windows install. Nuke it right from orbit! It’s the only way to be sure!

However, if reformatting the drive isn’t an option, we may give ‘Windows System Restore’ a try. See below for a quick look at the system restore feature. I’m running Windows 7 so the steps below will vary slightly from other versions of Windows.

We'll start by going to:

Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools -->System Restore

This will bring up the System Restore window:

After clicking next, we are given the opportunity to choose a specific restore point:

I only have one restore point. You may have many to choose from depending on your System Restore settings. 

Notice the button that says ‘Scan for affected programs’. This is an interesting new feature introduced in Windows 7. Clicking this button will generate a list of programs and drivers that will be affected (added/removed) in the event of restoration to a particular point. 

All that’s left now is to click finish and your system will be rolled back to an earlier, hopefully healthier time!