Safe Computing 101

While this topic may be redundant to many of you, I am constantly being reminded by end-users that this is definitely not the case for some companies.

Physical security of systems is important, but protecting your systems from Internet, network, and hardware peripheral infection is equally, if not more, important.

A recent example of this involved a customer who had a staff person working at home on a project using their laptop.  The laptop had not been connected to the Internet for more than (6) six months.  Using a borrowed thumb drive from a friend, which was infected with multiple "network aware" viruses, it was inserted into the laptops USB port.

Because the Laptops Anti-Virus, Anti-Spy-ware, and Windows security service packs were out of date, the laptop was easily infected with a number of different malicious viruses. These viruses shutdown vital services, deleted ALL of the demo application databases, and much of his demo POS application software and supporting files.

Files that the user was working on were then copied to the thumb drive. The thumb drive was taken into the office and inserted into a workstation that was also not properly protected.  Once on the workstations, the viruses then migrated across to their main business application server.  Even though no Internet access was allowed  from the server, there was also no Anti-Virus or Anti-Spy-ware software installed on the server.  So...  like with the laptop, the viruses proceeded to shutdown vital services, then deleted ALL of the live application databases, and much of their live POS application software and supporting files.

Recovering from something like the above can be extremely time consuming (hours or days), expensive, and can cause major disruptions and other serious financial losses to a business.

If you would like to insure that your system is properly protected, please contact the CCS Retail Systems Support Department to schedule a security review of your systems.  Don't let the something like the above case example happen to you!