Three Words For 2010

This post was written by admin on December 29, 2009
Posted Under: Security, System BackUp, Technology

1 – Backup, 2 – Backup, 3 – Backup!

Now, which one did you not understand, the first, the second or the third?

So many users get malware infections, either though driveby downloads that the user is unaware of, or more commonly, through clicking on enticing looking links and downloading rogue programs.

Sometimes removal can be simple, but the cybercriminals are using many more devious ways to implant the malware onto users computers. Many users also resort to using System Restore, but by doing so another Restore Point is created with the malware and the problem returns. Very clever!

Creating backups is simple and easy, it also means that when malware does strike, and it is one of the more difficult ones to remove, restoring a clean backup image of the system can be much quicker than running several programs, submitting HijackThis logfiles and going around in circles!

Every month, I create a new backup. I store one on a partition on my internal drive and one on an external drive. I also keep the previous months backup and delete the oldest one as a newer one is created. All of these are ‘ghost images’ of my operating system with all of my files and folders.

Currently I have December and November images stored in two locations, and when I create a new image I delete the oldest once I am satisfied that it is a good image and clean.

Cleaning malware can be very time consuming and frustrating as users who are infected are guided step by step to remove the malware. A lot of it also hijacks browsers, there are fixes for this too, BUT if users created an image regularly, it would be far easier to spend 30 minutes to an hour restoring a clean image rather than using a multitude of removal tools.

Windows 7 has a built-in imaging program and a System Rescue ISO ready to burn to disk. For all other systems use Macrium Reflect, it’s free and it works and also allows users to create a bootable rescue disk.

Viruses are decreasing, malware is increasing and is a very profitable and well organised business for the cybercriminals.

Don’t become a victim. As 2010 approaches social sites will be targeted with even more malicious links so think twice before clicking and the criminals will use more devious methods to entice users into downloading rogue programs that are laden with malware.

Check the link with Web of Trust and use search engines to get more information.

Modern hard drives are big enough to be partitioned and external usb drives are relatively cheap, so BACKUP and you then have a safety net.

Happy New Year everyone, and surf safely with the Web of Trust

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