Why is malware so bad?
It seems every second day another big company gets struck down by malware yet it is not often understood by the general population. In 2011, SBS Television Australia suffered a malware attack as did the Herald-Sun a week prior – read the article in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Everyone knows what a virus is but how does malware vary?
Malware includes:
- Viruses
- Worms
- Trojans
- Spyware
- Root Kits
How does malware get on your computer? You might innocently visit a website that is infected with malware and unbeknownst to you, your computer becomes infected. Once it has been infected your keystrokes, passwords, credit card information and logins from your favourite websites become available to the nasty person that created the program.
As more and more of us are using internet banking, smartphones, and cloud computing we are more and more susceptible to malware.
Years ago people created viruses to test themselves against the government and big business. Now it’s big business to steal your information.
You wouldn’t give your PIN to just anyone, why would you potentially expose your bank details to a criminal?
There are a variety of different programs out there that you can use. The program I have been using for years is Malwarebytes. It is exceptionally easy to use and (cross-fingers) I haven’t had any issues with malware or the program so far. There is a new update every day which takes less than a minute to download and a scan takes between 3-6 minutes for a standard PC.
Make it part of your weekly household cleaning!
Finally the old adage of “Don’t Download anything from a source you don’t trust”
As part of our website maintenance and hosting arrangements, we run malware scanners over all our client websites every six hours ensuring the security of your website.
Rob Jennings
