[RTC List] 60 Minutes story: The Internet is Infected

[Dwight Winegar]

Of course the REAL trick is to get people to turn on their Anti-Virus,  
Anti-Spam, Firewall Protections, and then keep them up to date on a  
regular basis.  It is amazing how many people I come across who either  
have them turned off "because they are such a hassle and always coming  
on when we log on", or they think that once they are installed updates  
never have to be run.   I had someone's Mac last week that was causing  
file corruption because of ancient anti-virus software that had never  
been upgraded or updated, but was still on.

- Dwight

On 30 Mar 2009, at 6:14 PM, Pat Bitton wrote:

> Despite all 60 Minutes' (and Symantec's) attempts at the contrary,  
> the sky
> is not going to fall on April 1st. Anyone whose system is patched up  
> to date
> and who has updated anti-virus protection from a reputable vendor  
> (with
> heuristic detection for preference, as this will block any new  
> iterations of
> Conficker that appear) is unlikely to experience any ill-effects.
>
> Interestingly, the number of new virus examples appearing in labs  
> every day
> was actually under-estimated by Symantec. AVG (full disclosure: I am a
> contractor for them) has between 20,000 and 30,000 new samples  
> arriving in
> their labs every day. BUT most of these never make it into the wild,  
> so all
> that updating really doesn't improve protection to any significant  
> degree.
>
> The bad guys on the Internet are mostly in Russia and China. This  
> has been
> the case for several years. Anyone interested in the backstory  
> should check
> out the archives at Roger Thompson's blog,
> http://tcsltesting.blogspot.com/index.html.
>
> Pat Bitton
> Partner, Euresto Partners Inc
> Sales & Marketing Strategies for Technology Startups
> +1 707 268 8968/+1 408 464 0829 cell
> MSN IM: pbitton at hotmail.com
> Skype: pat.bitton
> Follow me on Twitter @PatBitton
> www.eurestopartners.com
>
> Looking for security advice? Check out
> www.theinternetprotectors.com
>
>