How to tackle with a virus on a LAN?

[Tod]

1.) Preventative Maintenence

a) Purchase a REAL TIME anti-virus solution from a major vendor. Wether it be McAfee, Norton (Symantec), Trend Micro or Sophos, it's worth the little money it costs to get a 1 year subscription. Keep your virus definitions up to date with the vendor that you purchase your virus definitions from.

b) Schedule, at the least, weekly virus scans on your network or personal computer. You really should be praticing this procedure more than once a week, but this is a bare minimum.

c) Keep open folder and drive shares to a minimum. One of the first things that most viruses try to do is replicate itself. Stop damage to your LAN by minimizing the number or network shares that you have connections to and/or available.

d) Keep anonymous downloads to a minimum. Most of you share/receive files over some sort of P-2-P file-sharing application.

[Curt]

) Actions to Take

So, what can be if you are infected ?

a) If you find your PC infected, first of all disconnect from your LAN immediately! This will minimize potential immediate infections on other PCs on the same LAN. Whatever you have to do.....do it fast: Disable your LAN, unplug the LAN, turn off the switch, turn off the gateway/router,, whatever it takes.

b) For those with a second computer to help you out, try and find out as much as possible about the virus that you are dealing with. A lot of these sites have removal tools as well.

c) Run a search on google.com concerning your virus. It's absolutely amazing what you might find!