Protection Two-Step

Hi Everyone. I am asked all the time about anti-virus, both personally and professionally. The answer always starts the same; it makes no difference how much you buy or how much you have. Nothing is 100%. With that being said, I want to talk to you about your home protection.

My suggestion is a two-part scenario that focuses on prevention more so than remediation. Think about that. Certainly, it would be more beneficial to your time and energy if you put a plan in motion that works on being proactive, so you do not spend much time reacting to every threat, am I right? Let’s have a look at this scenario.

Part One – There are dozens of anti-virus products out there and they are essentially as effective as the flu shot; not very. So how do you choose which one to get? Should you pay for protection or get the free protection? Free protection is great if you are the type of person who will scrutinize everything that happens to your system because of the horrors of the Internet. However, if you ask what Joel does, I pay for the premium version of MalwareBytes Anti-Malware. Here is why. MalwareBytes has a much different stand on viruses; instead of remediation after infection, they focus on being proactive and making sure the infection cannot harm your system and they do so by stopping the two-way communication between the virus and the virus command center.

Part Two – Take an extra step to protect your home network and do it for free! Stop on over to OpenDNS.com and sign up for an account and start protecting. Here at Reybold, we use Cisco Umbrella which is the Enterprise version of OpenDNS. With this free personal service, you will either change some settings in your computers or in your home router with their incredibly easy-to-follow instructions and once done, you are under the umbrella of protection by the service. Not only does OpenDNS provide a much faster browsing service for your Internet, it also has the build-in protection that Cisco offers by blocking bad elements from passing through the DNS to your router and/or systems.

So, this is my personal plan that somewhat follows the path we use here at work. We deploy a strong Anti-Virus package on the computers and then we add the outer layer of protection from Cisco to keep bad guys out to begin with. Just remember, this is like anything else and not 100% effective. All of these things cannot prevent the number one problem when it comes to infections; the human element. You still have to be vigilant with where you are browsing and what happens in your email.

http://www.malwarebytes.com/premium
http://www.opendns.com/home-internet-security

TECH SUPPORT SCAMS ON THE RISE

My friends, I know that you might hear this from me a lot, but the issue with these fake #tech #support #scams, which come by way of Pop-up windows, pop-up windows with AUDIO and telephone calls is becoming ever so more serious. I have been inundated with clients dealing with these issues daily which tells me that they are on a steady rise. These scams are not going to go away because it is a multi-billion dollar (annually) industry.

Here are some questions I am getting and I pass this on to you. Feel free to pass this on to friends and family and SHARE my page so folks can find me if they find themselves in peril with their computers.

What did I do wrong to get this pop-up? Likely, nothing. These pop-ups are generated by scripts that are placed into websites unknowingly by the website owner so it is passed to you when you land on an otherwise legitimate website. One of the newer ways this is happening is that the malicious code is tied to advertising on webpages, which again, will auto-launch when you land on the page.

I have a pop-up, what do I do? The first thing to do is realize that it is FAKE. No one from #Microsoft or any other company knows if you have viruses or such. But you have to get this off your screen and fast, right? So you might notice that you cannot just close the browser so you have to open your Task Manager. To do this, Right-Click on the taskbar that lays across the bottom of your screen. Select the Task Manager. When that loads, you can click on the web browser that is open (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer...) and click End Process. That should close the browser and all associated windows/pop-ups along with it. If that fails, you can always hold your power button in until the computer shuts down (NOTE – I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS SHUTDOWN PROCEDURE).

Now am I infected? You might be. There is no guarantee that the pop-up did not drop a drive-by downloader off when the pop-up activated. To be sure you should check your system fully or have a qualified technician look it over for you. If in doubt, have it checked out.

Until we cut off the money supply these types of scams will not only continue but they will continue to outsmart the human element to get what they want. Using some common sense decisions will prevent the cyber criminals from winning.

Computer Support on a Stick? Hold That Thought!

You’ve seen the ads on television; Everything from a USB flash drive to solve all of your computing woes to inexpensive remote service techs. These sound like great tools when you are watching a thirty second or sixty second ad because they squeeze a lot of fantastic words into the delivery and the end result is that this flash drive or service will solve your problems instantly and forever! Remember that anything that sounds too good to be true probably is not.

So let’s break this down by the two different classes. The first class is the all-in-one USB stick. You purchase this product and insert it into a USB port and it is suppose to solve all the issues on your computer. There will be interaction by you, the consumer. This is a suite of tools that will need to be run individually to do certain functions of cleaning and disinfecting. But when you’re finished how do you truly know that the infections are gone? How do you know that your computer is actually clean? What if your infection was a root kit? Wait..what is a root kit? That is a lot of unanswered questions, right. Guess what, all you really paid for there was a glorified cookies and browser cache cleaner. It did nothing to eradicate the viruses, Trojans, spyware or anything else.

The second class is the over-the-telephone experts. Call them now and get your computer running faster in 30 minutes only $19.99! Well, the $19.99 is apparently a fee you give them to allow an unknown person remote access to your computer. Once in they tell you that you have $300-$1000 worth of necessary work to be done to your computer. Believe it or not many people will fall for this and the headaches that ensue afterwards are anything from even slower computers to more viruses to have pictures and documents stolen from your computer. What is that worth to you? Scary isn’t it? The end result is that you have to hire a professional anyway to undo the damage that was done when you could have hired a qualified technician in the first place to take care of your needs. Several know cases to me on this are that after not allowing the additional work to be performed, strange things happen after the “tech” logs off the computer.

So as you can plainly see there are problems with both of these classes of computer hope. The facts are that only a qualified technician can actually diagnose your computer and tell if you have a serious problem and how serious. No two viruses are the same; some keep regenerating after software or a tool gets rid of them. A USB stick will not tell you if you have legitimate problems lurking in your system. It takes the care and expertise of a professional who knows what to look for and the end result is that you are treated kindly and taking care of in a manner that is much more guaranteed than a flash drive you purchased off the television. Look into the guarantees that come with these other products and services. Trust your computer to an expert and develop a relationship with that individual or business. You will be much happier in the end.