Virus Signatures - Monthly Updates Not Good Enough

This article is about updating your virus scanners. If you are in charge of maintaining your own machine, read this now. If you have a system administrator in charge of maintaining your machine, then I urge you to give a copy of this article to your system administrator.
 
That being said, I will continue.
 
Folks, things have gotten a lot crazier when it comes to updating your virus scanners. For those not "in the know," when you update your virus scanners, you update one or two (or both) of these things:
 
* the code used to determine whether or not viruses exist
 
* signatures, or snippets of code or data that virus scanners use to help detect the presence of viruses. Virus scanners with greater amounts of signatures can detect greater amounts of viruses.
 
You have to update your virus scanner because new viruses come out all of the time. Your virus scanner that you installed in 1997, chances are, will have no clue about viruses released last year, much less last month. If you have an old or non-updated virus scanner, you may think that you are protected, but it is just like closing the doors to your house but keeping the doors unlocked. There is a facade of safety that will be revealed if a virus attacks your seemingly safe PC.
 
How do you update your virus scanners? Check your scanner's website or contact their technical support. Better yet, many scanners, such as Norton's AntiVirus come with a feature called "LiveUpdate" that grabs and installs new scanner updates over the Internet.
 
Are you using a PC at work? Many companies have virus-updating policies. They make sure that their signatures are updated on a frequent basis. This is good, but, unfortunately, most businesses like these update their signatures once a month. This used to be acceptable, but I believe this practice cannot continue any more.
 
You should update your virus scanners at least once a week. Yes, let me repeat myself. You need to update your virus scanners and/or signatures weekly, at the very least.
 
I'm going to hear a lot of complaints about this suggestion. Updating virus scanners, especially on a lot of machines, may take quite a bit of time. Plus, updating the scanners may not be enough. Once the scanners are updated, full system scans may need to be performed on the computers.
 
Complain all you want about the time involved in performing this activity. I don't care. In the last few days (editor's note: this article was originally written 12/5/1999), I have talked to several individuals and dealt with a couple of companies whose computers have been infected with the (as of this writing new) ExploreZip.Pack virus. This virus, which was practically undetectable by any virus scanner last updated before November 27 of that year, carries a payload that destroys DOC files. It can also destroy .C files, .CPP files, and other important pieces of information.
 
Just think about it. At the very least, this virus destroys .DOC files (if you don't know what .DOC files are, think Microsoft Word documents!) Design documents, status reports, resumes, letters, and other important information may just simply vanish.
 
This is not the way you want to start a weekend, believe me. Because if this happens to your machines on a Friday afternoon, you may not have much of a weekend.
 
Viruses are coming out on a daily basis. Even updating virus scanners weekly will not keep you immune from attacks, as viruses less than a week old or viruses not detectable by scanners can still enter your machines. But, updating scanners weekly should considerably lower your chances of getting infected if you currently update your scanners monthly. I can't guarantee it. I'm only looking at statistics and MalekTips reader comments.
 
This article is copyright 2000 Andrew Malek and originally presented on MalekTips.com (http://www.malektips.com). MalekTips is a computer tips and tricks site with hundreds of tips on Windows, Dos, Office, Internet Explorer, and more. MalekTips also offers software links, discussion forums, and computer news. Contact Andrew Malek for reprint information.
 
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