Prevent worms from entering your network
One of the main difficulties with network security is keeping all of the hardware and firewall protection that you have rightfully employed up to date – users can be useful in this cause as long as they have the right education – simple things like maintaining Microsoft Windows updates better prepare your network for threats such as worms.
If you also use Microsoft Office further attention should be paid to these applications – Microsoft have employed some automation to this procedure and updates can be automatically retrieved in the main-part from the Microsoft Windows Update site.
Don’t leave updates to software anti-virus protection to your users though! If you don’t already employ a package that allows you to centrally manage your software anti-virus protection then you should think about making the investment – such a system allows you to keep a tight grip on virus prevention and will alert you of any PCs that are potential targets.
Even if you have a network that is protected by hardware firewalls it may not be a bad idea to employ software firewalls on the desktop. Virus threats can be ‘walked’ into the office environment especially if employees have laptops or are bringing email or info on cds to the office.
There are a few tools that you can use to clear up adware and spyware – Microsoft have a good tool called Microsoft Anti-spyware, others include Adaware and Spybot both available as downloads.
There are some common principles here which, if you employ, will help to keep your network clear of highly publicised threats such as the "CME-24," "BlackWorm," or "Mywife.E." worm. You need to continually employ the tactics and procedures to keep your network worm free as new daily threats emerge. Admittedly this article is very much focused toward the desktop but experience has shown that most of the infection problems I have seen over the past few years could have been avoided by keeping security protection at the desktop layer employed and up to date.
