Worms and Viruses

Worms and viruses can generate enormous amounts of traffic. The W32/ Opaserv worm, for example, is still prevalent, even though it is an old one. It spreads through Windows shares and is detected by other people on the Internet because it attempts to spread further. It is therefore essential that anti-virus protection is installed on all PCs. Furthermore, user education about executing attachments and responding to unsolicited email is essential. In fact, it should be a policy that no workstation or server should run unused services. A PC should not have shares unless it is a file server; and a server should not run unnecessary services either. For example, Windows and Unix servers typically run a web server service by default. This should be disabled if that server has a different function; the fewer services a computer runs, the less there is to exploit.