Devastating Impact of Virus Attack!

Digital data makes our lives easier in many ways. It is easy to copy and replicate. You can create thousands of copies instantly of the same information and send it over wires without any delay to all parts of the world. It is easier to process, modify and store. However, the problem is that digital data can be easily destroyed or made inaccessible due to a variety of causes.

Data is usually stored on hard drives, optical disks, tape drives, floppy drives and USB drives. These are prone to failure and data loss because of hardware and software errors. The former includes damage to the data recording surface, physical structure, mechanical components or circuitry of the devices. Software errors include data loss due to accidental deletion of files by the user, reformatting of storage media and data corruption. Then there are natural or man-made disasters that may strike a location without warning and wipe off all data.

In todays world, one of the most potent threats to digital data comes from computer viruses. These are the stuff nightmares are made of in the cyber-world. Viruses are nothing but malicious software programmes that are designed to do some mischief or damage to data. The relatively harmless ones may force you to do things such as pressing some keyboard key at regular intervals to allow you to work on the computer.

The really nasty ones may reformat your entire hard disk without your permission or corrupt files, especially those in the boot sector. You will have to load the operating system again to boot your computer while you can say good bye to the files that existed on your now-formatted hard disk. Some viruses are called Trojans because they hide themselves in a harmless-looking data file, such as an image or greeting card and quietly enter your computer system when you download data to your hard disk.

Computer viruses, like biological viruses, can lie dormant for many days or months before striking. Many of these are designed to activate themselves on a particular date and act much like time bombs. Viruses are no laughing matter. These cause damage worth billions of dollars each year both in terms of data loss and the man hours and money companies waste while the data is being recovered by professionals.

Who writes these viruses and to what purpose? Since viruses are nothing but a piece of cleverly written software code, it is evident that they have to be produced by software programmers who have the required specialised knowledge. Many virus creators are young software engineering students in colleges who are trying to impress each other or even themselves about their prowess. Some just get a kick out of proving to their own selves how creative or powerful they are. There are also some seriously deranged individuals out there who get sadistic pleasure out of creating viruses and see them cause massive damage to other peoples computer data.

A decade or two back, where Internet was not that much popular, data used to be transferred from one computer to another through removable storage media such as a floppy disk or optical disk. Viruses used to travel over these devices and spread from one place to another. However, with the coming of the Internet, the scenario has changed drastically. As computers get hooked to the Net, the viruses have begun to trawl the cyberspace looking for potential victims. Most viruses today enter computer systems through Internet downloads, with or without the users permission.

What can be done in such a situation to safeguard your computer? To beat the viruses, there are specialised software programmes available imaginatively named anti-virus vaccines. You have to load these onto your computer, where they reside, keeping a watch on all files entering your machine. The anti-virus vaccine has a huge library built in of software codes of all known viruses. The moment it spots a file that has matching code, it identifies the type of virus and sounds a warning, thus allowing you to abort the download.

Using the anti-virus software, you should periodically conduct a scan of all your storage media such as hard drives, USB drives and optical disks. This helps in weeding out dormant viruses that may have crept in somehow. Also, you should keep updating virus definitions of your software by downloading them from the website of vendors who sell the anti-virus vaccine.