How to protect your PC from cyber crime

Jun 30 2009 by jez Davison, Evening Gazette

EXPERTS say prevention is the best form of cure for cyber crime - but what happens if your PC is already laid low with a virus?

Neil McLachlan, security services manager at Middlesbrough IT specialist Onyx Group, gives the following advice:

1. Dust down the PC installation disk and reload your software. This could help eradicate the virus.

2. If that doesn’t work, an automated tool could be a more potent medicine - but could come at a considerable cost depending on the nature of the virus. Consult an IT expert for advice.

3. Visit research and training organisation SANS Institute (www.sans.org) for updates on the top 20 internet security risks. If you think your PC is in need of a health check, log onto www.qualys.com/forms/ trials/qualysguard_sans20_scan/ to see if your internet-facing systems pass the free SANS Top 20 security tests.

4. Patch, patch and patch again. When you receive your Windows security updates, install them as soon as possible to ‘patch up’ your ailing PC. Effectively they are red flag warnings that your PC security is vulnerable.