Update your virus signatures!

People say I'm paranoid about updating virus signatures. I'm in charge of the AntiVirus regimen here at our service company, and I make sure our servers download and distribute new virus signatures daily if they're available. It really doesn't require a lot from our pipe (at 256K burstable Frame Relay, the download takes less than five minutes), and I set it to go off at 10 PM so no one is on and it doesn't interfere with our backup.

Why am I so nuts about updating virus signatures? The current estimate is that there are 12 new viruses released into the wild per day. In a month, that's 360 new viruses. Our AV product (Norton Corporate Ed. 7.0) gets updated signatures about 7 or 8 times per month.

Here is an example of why it is critical for the virus definitions to be as current as possible. On February 28, 2000, our company received three documents from a rather large and reputable corporation, which I won't name, but its initials are General Electric. Two of the three documents were infected with a Word macro virus called W97M.JIM.A. Our Norton AntiVirus found the viruses and removed them before the documents were opened, preventing infection to the workstation and to the network, where we saved the documents. When we looked up JIM.A on the Symantec Website, we found that it was first discovered on February 15, 2000. We contacted GE and found that they were also using Norton AntiVirus, but that their system had not been updated since February 7. Our system, updated February 24, found and removed the viruses that their system did not even know that they had!

Bottom line: Just having virus protection is not enough. Make sure you update your signatures according to your software's directions at least weekly.

------------------
R. Bret Walker, CNE

I totally agree, I update mine regularly. I cleaned a version of W97M off a network not long ago. A tech brought 1 of the workstations back with strange problems. The virus defs were 4/99. I updated and found the virus. Then went back and found a few hundred instances of it on the entire network.

------------------
I ripped the head assembly out - it spins up fine now...

I rather enjoy it when ppl do not update regularly. Remember CHI virus?? minimum charge of $90 to get the machine backup and running. Even more if the board was not flashable. Viruses are a great way to get lots of money out of your customers. And the sound of their voice when you tell them all the data is gone and unrecoverable almost always brightens my day, especially when the person was just in the other day screaming about the piece of crap that they had bought.

ohhh yeah! 95A, bogged down registry, 5 trillion programs installed with 150 running in background and it stops booting. I find stealth boot B.
Perfect excuse to wipe it and reinstall!!

------------------
I ripped the head assembly out - it spins up fine now...

One college where I formerly taught was not completely networked - some technophobic individuals wanted to retain their independance. The recruiting department in particular was pathetic. They were perpetually infected. In turn, I think they must have infected half the universe with the Happy99 worm - makes you really popular with your email correspondents - really good for public relations - inspires great confidence in the institution as a whole. Never mind antivirus updates. How about getting the morons even to use antivirus software?