Fighting Nasty Computer Viruses

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Apparently computer viruses are still a big nuisance for businesses and their IT departments. The 2008 CSI Computer Crime & Security Survey, which was released a few months ago, identified computer viruses as a top threat. Last year, viruses affected about half of the companies it surveyed.

And it seems the computer viruses are getting nastier. Last week, a friend of mine got hit with a really bad one that slipped past his anti-virus software and messed up his office computer for days. It was popping up a constant stream of ad windows while blocking any and all websites or search results having to do with removing viruses. The malicious files were masquerading as important parts of Windows, which made them impossible to delete. (The virus was creating a lot of random .dll files.)

After many attempts to restore his system and after installing and uninstalling several types of anti-virus software, he finally found one that killed the virus in a jiffy: Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Just thought I'd pass along the name in case there were other businesses out there dealing with the same bug.

For more on computer viruses and preventing other common IT disasters, check out our recent guide, "Help! Somebody Save Our Files!"