Posts Tagged ‘Computer virus’

Just How Secure Are Your Electronic Medical Records?

Wednesday, December 14th, 2011

More and more doctors and medical facilities are using electronic medical records.  The soon (hopefully not) to be implemented health care law will require electronic medical records for everyone.  But just how secure will the electronic medical records be?

If you lived in Lawrenceville Georgia, you would seriously be questioning the security of the Gwinnett Medical Center’s IT systems today.  The Gwinnett Medical Center which is located near Atlanta, had to shut down the majority of their network yesterday.

The medical center’s network was infected with a virus.  This could have been caused by a variety of reasons, such as system which had not been updated or a user doing something that they shouldn’t be doing.  Regardless of the reason, this was a major incident, affected a lot of people and in a facility which focuses on saving lives.

One would think that the fault lies with the people running the IT department.  While this is a possibility, most people outside of the medical IT field are unaware that many medical devices use standard operating systems such as Windows.  While this is not necessarily a bad thing, the makers of these medical devices prohibit keeping the systems updated with the latest patches; this is a horrible practice and one which temps disaster.

Why would any company, especially one which designs and builds medical equipment forbid updating their equipment?  Their concern is the devices may no longer work.  This is so contrary to common sense it is hard to believe.

Unfortunately caveat emptor, is meaningless here as once the government gets involved and forces organizations to use certain systems, the situation is out of our control!

We are currently offering a free Data Disaster Audit and Review to businesses in the Clifton Park, Albany and Saratoga area who would like some options to help Eliminate HI-Tech Frustrations.  If you’d like some free tips, give us a call or fill out our online form at www.HITmanSafe.com.

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Did You Get Hit with Yesterday’s Email Virus?

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Yesterday, many companies found their computers coming to a halt as a result of a computer virus which was circulating the Internet.  The virus was called “here you have”, because of the subject line, is a Trojan-Horse which arrives in an email.  As with many viruses of this sort, the major problems come as a result of a user clicking on the link, which then infects the computer.

One of the many benefits to having a system like our hosted email system in place, is that the internal network does not take a traffic hit.  This is because the email server resides outside the local network.  Our spam filtering and the initial phase of our virus scanning also takes place outside the network.

While there is no sure way to be safe on the Internet, aside from abstaining, our clients did not face the same issues as that of CBS, Disney, AIG, NASA, and many others.

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Spyware and Malware Misconception #3

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

If my computer is working fine right now, I don’t need to perform maintenance on it.

This is probably one of the biggest and most deadly misconceptions that most computer users fall victim to. Computers are just like cars. If you don’t change the oil, change the filter, rotate the tires, flush the transmission, and perform other regular maintenance on your car, it will eventually break down and cost you FAR MORE to repair than the cost of the basic maintenance.

There are certain maintenance checks that need to be done daily (like virus updates and spam filtering), weekly (like system backups and a spyware sweep), and monthly or quarterly like checking for and installing security patches and updates, disk defrag, spyware detection and removal, checking the surge suppressor and the integrity of the hard drive, and so on.

Your computer repair technician should be adamant that you have regular maintenance done on your computer and should offer to set up automatic virus definition updates, spam filtering (to avoid viruses), and automatic system backups that are stored on an OFF SITE location (this protects the backup from fire, flood, or other natural disasters).

Lack of system maintenance is the NUMBER ONE reason most people end up losing valuable files and incurring heavy computer repair bills.

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10 Surefire Signs That You Are Infected With Spyware, Malware, and Viruses

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

Since most malicious programs such as viruses, spyware and malware are designed to hide themselves, detecting their existence is not always easy.

Recently a person who came into our computer repair facility in Clifton Park asked how they could tell they were infected with a virus, so we put this list together.

Here are a few surefire signs that you have been infected:

1 – You start getting swamped with pop-up ads that seem to come from nowhere and constantly interrupt your use of the computer.
2 – Your computer is unstable, sluggish, locks up, or crashes frequently.
3 – Your web browser’s home page changes on its own and you cannot modify the settings. You may also see toolbars on your web browser that you did not set up.
4 – You get a second or third web browser popping up behind your main browser that you didn’t open or request.
5 – Mysterious files suddenly start appearing.
6 – Your CD drawer starts opening and closing by itself.
7 – You get constant runtime errors in Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express.
8 – You find emails in your “Sent Items” folder that you didn’t send.
9 – Some of your files are moved or deleted or the icons on your desktop or toolbars are blank or missing.
10 – You suddenly see your self appear in a window from your webcam.

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