Seems sort of silly to start an article off this way, but I am amazed by how many people still do not run their computers with adequate anti-virus and anti-malware protection.
While liftDEMAND hosted Email protects against inbound Email threats it is not intended to be a replacement for running protection at the local computer level.
Most folks that don’t run anti-virus and anti-malware protection do this because they don’t want to “slow down” their computers or because they don’t want to pay for the updates.
However, this is simply not a good reason. If a computer is slowed down by the software designed to protect it, it is time to upgrade your computers!
If you haven’t yet invested in protection for your computer, click here to read PC Magazine’s review of 2013’s best anti-virus systems. These all offer great protection solutions that are budget-friendly.
Keeping your anti-virus system updated is critical because viruses are always changing. It doesn’t do any good to run virus protection using definitions that are one to three (or more) years old. It is just an invitation for a disaster, for example, having your Email account shut down.
Here’s what happens:
- Your computer that’s not protected properly becomes infected.
- A virus creates privileges for itself to take over your computer when you aren’t using it and turns it into a spam zombie.
- Your computer becomes a part of an international network of hacked computers sending out spam at an alarming rate using your Email account.
- Your Email host (including liftDEMAND) notices a significant bump in activity coming out of your Email account. Furthermore, there is a spike of responses saying that you are sending spam.
- Your Email account is immediately suspended until absolute proof is provided that your computer is no longer a threat.
- Your account cannot send or receive Email because it is blocked.
- Once a system is infected, it is a significant (and expensive) undertaking to completely clean it from an infection. It can take a tech an entire day (or more) to fully clean a system. (Figure up to 8 hours x $100 /hour = $800!)
Furthermore, if your computer is a part of a network of unprotected systems, there is a high likelihood that other computers may also have become infected.
Your tech will need to scan and potentially repair ALL of the systems in your office. You can see how this bill can add up quickly.
While this may seem like basic information, we are seeing an uptick in customers that are not running adequate protections on their systems. They figure as long as they are running protection, even if it hasn’t been updated in a year or two, they should be safe. Experience has shown this isn’t the case.
An ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure!
So, if you want to end up with suspended Email accounts, run out-dated anti-virus protection or don’t even run any protection at all!
But if you take your business seriously, be sure your systems are adequately protected with an anti-spam system that auto-updates itself and keeps your system truly clean from threats.
