viruses bankrupting our travel agency !

[Parangles]

This afternoon for the third time in a month our travel agency network is infected with a virus. This time W32/klez.gen@mm.
Ok - so I go to the agency at 6am and try to get it out with all the downloaded .DAT files from McAfee or some patch from Trend Micro and if not maybe try to dig it out of the Registry manually and failing that call Mike and add on to our $1000 bill with him.
But......the point is, what can we do to stop this constant infection?
We are running McAfee 6.0 updated weekly, scanning once a week, and advising all staff to live with whatever p***s size they have and not open any email that offers to increase it. :D
Can I have only one person open email, scan each one, and then forward it to the recipients?
Change from OE to Eudora which I have at home ?
As travel agents we are trying to cope with nobody flying and zero commission but maybe viruses will be the proverbial final straw.

Cheers,

Chris.

[glc]

Here is what I personally would do.......

1. Switch to Eudora or Pegasus.

2. Install an antivirus package that scans incoming mail real time and offers an automatic update feature that checks for updates on every Net connect (Norton 2002 does this).

3. Strictly forbid all employees from opening attachments directly out of the e-mail software. Teach them how to save the attachment to a holding folder and scan it with the antivirus.

[Parangles]

Thanks glc,
My wife tells me that OE express( which I don't use ) is probably a major part of the problem since it opens mail automatically as soon as you highlight it/without clicking on it in the inbox.
ie. you cannot avoid opening a particular message even if it appears obviously suspicious.

Cheers,

Chris

[Orcmonkey]

Well, You can turn off that PREVIEW PANE as they call it, so you do have to open the message yourself. Just go to view-preview pane. I agree with GLC on the real time e-mail scanning. NAV 2002 is great for this, from my experiance. Other than that, just try to keep everyone informed on whats safe to do and what isn't.

[oryx]

Whatever virus scanner you run, it needs to be running all of the time. That's because the newer viruses are designed to run without having to open attachments. With Visual Basic Script (VBS), you can get them from Outlook Email just by opening the message. With an up-to-date virus scanner running all of the time in the background, you should be able to prevent a lot of viruses. However, new viruses are created every day and no one's scanner can be ever be completely up-to-date.

Someone mentinoned Pegasus mail. The main advantage of Pegasus mail is that you can get a summary of messages on the server before you download them. The summary is sufficient to spot any suspicious messages. You have the option to delete them on the server, which means they don't get to your machine. :cool:

The main disadvantage of Pegasus is that the interface is kind of klunky. :(