Maintaining networked computer systems, it is only a matter of time before you end up dealing with a virus. Of course really these days it is increasingly rare that anyone seems to get just one virus. It starts with one, but many viruses plant themselves on your computer and commence to download other viruses, trojans, spyware, and other types of malware onto your computer. However, what is truly disturbing is that those that are writing the viruses seem to be finding more and more vectors to your computer.

In the 'old days' it was word docs with macro exploits carried around on an infected floppy. Then email viruses became the big nasty. Today they come from websites (the most notorious propagators being pornographic sites) and social networking services like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. Of course when I say they I really mean all types of malware. In general if its popular, the malware writters of the world want to hack it and exploit it to spew their posioned code to the world. Their motivations to do so are just as varied as the means through which they attack your system; fake antivirus software sales, financial scams, identity theft, monitoring of your habits to push ads to your computer, espionage, and sometimes just to see if they can do it.

What about Antivirus software, doesn't it protect me?

You might ask that question, and the answer is both yes and no. Remember even though you're taking a proactive measure to protect your computer by having Antivirus and Antispyware software, that type of software still only can work reactively. The reason is that the companies that write the protection signature updates can only push them out as fast as they can discover new threats, determine how they work, and then write code additions to prevent those threats from acting on your system. Consequently if the individuals that create the malware are targeting a popular website, they have a high chance of infecting a lot of systems before any protections against it come into existence.

So what can I do?

The first answer to that question is think before you act. If your computer pops up a box that says you need to buy something or install something that should be a big red flag telling you to stop and think about what could be happening. Often times malware needs you to intervene by clicking on something. So if you see an alert box of that nature, DON"T CLICK ON IT! Not even the little 'x' in the upper right corner because often times even that is a trick. Instead kill your web browsing session through the task manager. If you don't know how to do that then simply logoff and shutdown the computer and reboot it.

If the same box comes back up once you've restarted then its time to call in the professionals to fix it.