How long would it take you to recreate every address book, database, or document that you need from scratch? It would be an enormous task if you were not able to access your data for some unknown reason. This is why protection and planning is so crucial to you in your everyday computer life. 

You need to plan for the worst so that you will be ready if anything bad happens. You would not believe how many people come into my shop and their hard drive has died or crashed for whatever reason and they have no backup, no virus protection, and no plan. 

This month I would like to look at virus protection planning and why it is necessary to you. It will not take a lot of money or time to plan ahead but if you don't it could cost you a lot of time and money in the long run. My VirusScan program says that it is protecting me from 46981 viruses. There are about 300 new virus' a month according to McAfee and with a little quick calculating that comes to about 3600 new virus' a year. Most of these will be simple annoyances but there are many that will wipe out all the data on your drive. I will be able to recover most of your data that is lost by virus attacks but it is a labor-intensive process that could cost upwards of $300. 

There are a number of very good virus protection programs available. Each of them does virtually the same thing and the difference is in the user interface. I have found McAfee to be very reliable and that is what we will discuss. It is available online for $39.95 at www.mcafee.com or at any store that sells computer software. 

VirusScan uses an array of scanning features to keep your system virus free. With new Hunter technology, VirusScan detects 100% of viruses in leading lab tests, including boot sector, file, multipartite, stealth, polymorphic, encrypted and macro-such as Word and Excel viruses. VirusScan even protects against the newest threats to data security: Office 97/2000 macro viruses. It is not necessary for you to know what these viruses will do, only that you are protected from them. VirusScan detects viruses from floppy disks, Internet downloads, e-mail attachments, Intranets, shared files, CD-ROMs, and online services. VirusScan features an intuitive point-and-click interface for both scanning and configuration. It also features hands-free infection repair for automatic cleaning of complex and multiple infections. McAfee's new ScreenScan utility automatically launches scans whenever your screen saver is active. The electronic virus encyclopedia and calendar deliver expert information on the latest viruses. And, with the Emergency Disk creation utility, you can easily recover from boot virus infection. 

McAfee also offers a convenient and automatic way to update VirusScan with SecureCast by pushing upgrades and updates directly to your desktop, eliminating the time and effort associated with many other anti-virus products. Since it proactively sends the updates directly to your desktop, you don't need to constantly check on whether new updates are available. All you need to do is to click on the file and install the update. There are some changes that need to be made to the default installation. The first would be to enable Heuristics scanning under the System Scan Properties. This feature evaluates the probability that a macro in a Microsoft Office application is a virus. 

The second item will be to update the Virus definitions as soon as possible. Just because you just bought the program does not mean that it is new. It has probably been sitting on the store shelf for a month or two. With the figures from before that would mean that you would not be protected from the 300 to 600 new viruses that have been written since McAfee produced that copy of the program. This last month there were about 430 new viruses that the program protects you from. The next would be to make sure that if you use the Internet you have the Internet Filter enabled. This will protect you from the new Java and ActiveX viruses that some malicious web pages download to your machine without you knowing it. The same thing with E-mail and Download Scan, if you use e-mail then enable them. With all of the hoaxes and jokes that are being forwarded to so many e-mail recipients it is a wonder that viruses are not more widespread. 

The last and most important thing that you need to remember is to update your virus definition when the program tells you to. If the program does not tell you to update then you need to check the settings of the program to make sure that you have not turned off the reminder for the updates. 

Remember the numbers we discussed earlier, 300 new viruses a month for a total of about 3600 new viruses a year. I cannot tell you how many times I have taken a virus off of someone's computer and his or her first reaction is "I had virus protection installed". That part of the plan was good but if you don't update it regularly then you are defeating the purpose. 

I don't want to promote one of these programs over another. I use McAfee and I have been happy with it. Norton, F-Prot, ThunderByte and Sophus are some of the other programs that are available to you. I did a search on Yahoo for virus protection and came up with 52 matches. Talk to your friends or coworkers to see what they are using and then keep it updated and you should be fine.