Protect your USB from Viruses

Thumb drives or USB drives are popular among almost every PC user. Compact storage is offered to store projects, documents. The IT staff uses them to cart around tools. As these drives are popular and data is transferred between several systems frequently they are a soft target for hackers and intruders thereby spreading the infection.

In several firms USB drives are not allowed to be used as it can infect system easily. Silent applications are installed on workstations which would detect a drive when it has been inserted. That software would notify administrators.

Attackers would get infection through standard mediums with the help of bogus spam mail, exploits. The infection would not attack the system directly but would wait for any external device to be plugged in. After it has been plugged in, the virus transfers malicious code to device without knowing what is happening. The drive has become a tool which would transport the code he/she wants to the computer you plug the drive into may be the system in the office.   

Malicious code can steal personal information, sensitive documents, allow external access and even spread the virus to a system network. There are people who think that they have an encrypted flash drive so they are safe. It is wrong to think so. The encrypted ones are meant for data loss or theft. 

Digital photo kiosks are major distribution points for infections. If photo kiosk computers are infected it would be easy when thousands of people walk in and insert memory cards at Wal-Mart. What do you do to protect yourself against these activities? 

Now use the security features. Use sophisticated antivirus support. Use encryption as well as passwords on USB drive to protect data as well as ensure that you have details backed up in case you lost the drive. Just keep business USB drives as well as personal ones separate. Never use the personal drive on systems owned by your company and never plug USB drives that have corporate data into personal PC.

Maintain as well as use antivirus software and it updated. See to it that you use a reliable antivirus support. Use an antivirus, firewall and an anti-spyware software to make the system computer less susceptible to attacks. This can be done by using necessary patches. Never plug an unknown USB drive into your computer. In case you find an unclaimed USB drives give it to authorities. Never plug it into your computer to view contents or to identify the owner.

Some tech savvy users utilize virtual machine technology. If you use virtual machine software you can have a copy of an OS when checking email attachments, downloaded files and external storage devices for infections. If the virtual machine becomes infected then it can be restored easily from snapshot or an image. The data or even the device can be cured prior to being used on host operating system or any other computer.