If you were fortunate enough not to have been hit by the Love Letter virus, you probably know others who were. If you were hit, then you almost certainly infected customers, vendors, friends and colleagues, however unintentionally.
In addition to the direct, expensive damage it causes, it tarnishes your image. Those who receive infected files and e-mails from you may question your competence.
And it could easily happen again. And it does. All the time. Please examine the interactive map below, furnished by Trend Micro, a major anti-virus vendor (Note: JRVsystems has no affiliation with Trend Micro and no control over the contents of the image, which is used with their permission):
Normal virus scanners work well for stand-alone personal machines, but another class of virus scanner is designed for the more demanding needs of corporate computer systems. They are the only practical defense a system of more than 5 or 6 machines has against threats like LoveLetter.
To protect themselves, many have made a small, smart investment in an automatically managed, centralized virus scanning system. The software costs only $40 per machine, and every server and workstation in the system is protected, including off-site notebooks.
It updates itself daily without intervention, and in an emergency, the entire system can be updated and scanned in minutes without interrupting employees' use of the system.
Manually, it would take several days to do this…which is why many companies repeatedly sent LoveLetter-infected messages. During the week or so that LoveLetter was active, variants appeared rapidly enough that updates were needed much faster than companies without centrally-managed scanners could deploy them.
Once running, the system is self-maintaining. Scanner software is installed automatically on new computers the first time they connect to the network. End users need take no action at any time, and cannot accidentally disable it.
JRVsystems has deployed these systems and can apply our expertise to protecting your company. Please contact us if we can help you defend against this very real threat to your business.
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