On Worms and Viruses
Microsoft's dominance may have an unfortunate effect on its customer services, ubitiquity means longer queues and slower service.
Microsoft's genius is rarely matched, but it does remain that these data disasters could be prevented. Palladium probably goes too far.
If everyone just had a decent firewall, a lot of the wasteage would be averted. Microsoft should enable a free firewall and improve the montoring of their networking. They could incorporate a free Zone Alarm into Windows and enable it on every installation.
IP Filtering is essential if you want to eliminate most of the threats that are available in a Network (programming) environment. The hooks that are available in networking system calls enable access to the functionality of another computer. Before you allow illegal aliens access to your filesystems, you may want to consider at least hiding from open view. A simple firewall, like Zone Alarm, achieves a lot.
Sure there are viruses that attack firewalls, and viruses that attack operating systems. But to make your system invisible to the hacker port scanning is the best way to remove most of the threat. Only allow access to certain applications. Avoid non-isolated use of software that holds open channels (eg: chat rooms) over the net as it is through such open ports that worms can be sent to your machine.
It is also essential to isolate your internal network from your external network. Make an inhouse web cafe for your staff to use the net for matters that do not concern their work and do not allow access beyond the company functionality on the internal network.
For more advice or help in securing your network, contact us.
