Published May 17, 2000
Like the captain of a ship, you are in charge of the safety and maintenance of your computer. Only you can steer her clear of the reef in a sudden squall and keep her sails trimmed for fair weather efficiency.
As owner and operator of your passport to information and communications, you must not be afraid of the eerie sounds of wind through your rigging, of the creeks and groans of her hull bobbing through the choppy swells on her course. Your confidence and experiences replaces fear.
The infrequent denizen to the ocean of computing is more likely to be the novice sailor, an enthusiast for adventure, piloting their own course, in control. But in the calamity of unexpected problems, can we save sanity and our cargo (data).
Gather round; here’s the first quest: You’ve been at sea for several weeks; the crew abruptly discovers the food supply has been consumed or spoiled by unseen pestilence from something that was loaded onboard. What do you do?
No one wants to admit that they are vulnerable to a viral attack on their computer, or that it could seriously endanger their magnetic files. Even the most careful and knowledgeable persons can be confronted with a computer virus, or the opposite.
All Windows operating systems (OS) are at high risk to these nuisance intruders, much less so for Macintosh and hardly not at all for Linux. Files come to us innocently wrapped without warning labels of their dangerous contents or benevolent innocuousness.
The infestations to computers are not really micro-organisms. These so-called viruses, and their many counterparts (worms, trojan horses, macros), can be scanned and deleted before they are activated.
The family of virii are man-made programs, applications, that are transferred from one computer to many others via an external source, like a floppy disk or the Internet. Mostly they replicate themselves and spread when activated.
These executable files cannot interfere with your computer’s software functioning unless or until they are launched or run. Until then, these files remain dormant and can easily be purged by deleting them.
Recent events of the next “very bad virus” invading computers far and wide is cause for us to pause and prepare a defense against them. Only the files stored on your hard disk are targeted for alteration or destruction. The computer itself is not going to blow up or melt down!
How is a virus purged from your computer once activated? Commercial viral-checking software helps but won’t undo any damage that may have been caused. Of course a recent incremental data backup of your hard drives’ contents is securely archived, isn’t it? You do have a backup, right.
Let’s underscore the importance of operating your computer with a safety-net. If anything good comes from the news paranoia of the latest virus loose on the world, it’s that we develop good seamanship habits. Recovery is time-consuming but otherwise painless; just replace the data from your backup source.
Copy all data documents to a safe place if not the entire drive’s contents. What’s a safe place? A tape, recordable-CD, removable disk (like Jaz, Zip, Bernoulli), or a spare hard drive are ideally suitable. Do it often.
If a virus sneaks past the gargoyle sentries, and you notice something strange happening, it might be one of those. But it could be many other things too. Run the latest updated virus-check software to be sure. Of course you could hire this done by a professional, or you can learn to do it yourself, Captain.
The most common are alerts from well-meaning people that a “very bad virus” will do terrible things if you read the email message. Nonsense! Email messages are just text files. Email attachments might be executables, but are usually documents instead, and documents cannot hurt anything by opening them. Don’t panic and jump overboard.
The best prevention is avoidance. Instruct your employees about the do’s-and-don’ts of double clicking on any file that appears on the desktop. If the file is an executable (.exe suffix) application, then do not double click unless you are absolutely sure it is from a commercial software publisher.
Any unfamiliar file should be inspected/scanned before double clicking on it. Also, let’s be clear on the terminology. “Opening” a file does not mean “launching” it. A document is opened; a program is launched–run–executed. A program is never opened.
To read or pass along the warning “never open any unfamiliar file,” is damaging to legitimate and normal business practices. The suppositionally implied fear is that all files are dangerous. This is bogus and reprehensible. Please don’t erase everything because it might be bad!
Let’s not be suckered-into the gyrates of the media who revel in churning bad news to a froth proctoring a what-if future. More harm is caused by fear of viruses than by the actual incidents of damage.
As Captain of your Computer, you know how to identify offensive attacks, jettison contaminated cargo and navigate to safe waters. Be never afraid nor spread fear. The character of our nature is more magnanimous than that.