3 REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO DO COMPUTER VIRUS CHECKS WEEKLY

Protecting you & your data from electronic threats in today’s world isn’t just about watching out for viruses. In our ever-increasingly connected world, more than just the files on our computer are at risk: sometimes, our entire “digital life” is at risk, and from a variety of sources. You can easily lose data due to a virus on your computer. Viruses and other malicious software (known as “malware”) can cause data loss. Malware can cause a wide array of problems for your data, ranging from individual deleted files to drive partitions becoming damaged, even entire disk drives getting erased.

Probably the most commonly recognized threat to your data, a virus is typically a small, malicious piece of software that operates on your computer, in many cases, without you knowing it exists. A virus is designed to run automatically (often taking over part of another program, even in some cases taking over part of the startup process of your computer) and is also designed to automatically replicate (or reproduce) itself to multiple files on your computer or even on other computers attached to a network.

Some viruses are simply designed to be a nuisance (displaying annoying messages or offensive graphics, then replicating themselves), but others can be very dangerous and can delete files, damage programs, or even prevent access to entire disk drives.Viruses are commonly spread through e-mail attachments, instant messenger file transfers, or files downloaded from dangerous websites or file-sharing services.

Computer worms are designed to spread rapidly through even large computer systems – even around the Internet – without any human interaction at all, and can cause computers (and even entire computer networks) to bog down & become very slow or even unusable. While not usually malicious themselves, worms can cause computers & networks to run slowly enough that they are a severe nuisance, and they may also be used to deploy more-malicious software (such as a virus) later.

A Trojan, sometimes called a “Trojan horse” application, is also a malicious program designed to cause adverse effects, including data loss or even making your computer vulnerable to theft of data or hacking. However, Trojan horses disguise themselves as being safe, and often come in the form of a game, a joke, or even a tool that offers to rid your computer of viruses. Trojan horses will typically not replicate themselves, but can be very dangerous.

It is best to have a Virus Protection Software package loaded on your machine with a current subscription to update virus definitions.  You should update your virus definitions and scan weekly if not daily.

Here are 3 reasons why you must have a virus scan every week, at the bare minimum.

Recommended office computers antivirus scans: Weekly.

Especially if your users have a tendency to leave their PCs on all the time, setting virus scans to will slow down web browsing and computer efficiency. You could schedule it at lunch on a day that you know internet usage is low (check your weekly bandwidth logs), or best – do it once a week. People will be unhappy that their system runs slow for browsing the web on daily scans, and you don’t want that to hinder employee productivity.

Because a full antivirus scans will disenable use of your computer, it is not recommended that you do a daily scan – it takes too much of your precious computer un-use and work time. A scan in safe mode will scan more files because less files are locked (in use). The disadvantage is, of course, that you need to restart your computer, run the scan, then restart your computer again, which is time-consuming. Going through this tedious, time-consuming task will be too much, rendering your computer useless for a long time – time which you could use for precious vital office work.

Because all days of the week would be a total overkill, and once a month is tooseldom to catch viruses at its onset. Prudence is key when protecting files, so you must be able to stop viruses before it does much damage. Monthly antivirus scans are too far apart. This gives these threats too much time to wreak havoc on your computer system. On the other hand, daily virus scans are too much (some even have it twice a day!). Weekly would be a good balance between overkill and occasional.