March 6 came and went this year without
much hullabaloo. In fact, I completely glossed over the date without a
single neuron tugging at my conscience. Many of you who read this will
remember only as you read the remainder of this sentence that March 6
is the birthday of the artist Michelangelo, and the activation date of
the PC virus attributed to his name. Oh yes! That March 6.
Granted, I'm glad we didn't have the media circus surrounding the
activation date that we did two years ago. In fact, I only remembered
the date myself from a friend making a passing comment about a news
brief he had observed on March 6th. The lack of awareness about this
particular date is indicative of a much larger apathy in the virus
arena right now. Allow me to explain.
The clearest indication I observed recently came from a short
course I was to give about viruses. The last time it was offered, it
had to be canceled because of low enrollment. If memory serves
correctly, only one or two people showed interest in the topic. Granted,
I'm slightly biased in my opinion that this material should be required
instruction for anyone using a computer. However, given the number of
viruses we continue to see on student diskettes in our computer labs at
UNT, there should be a much higher level of interest than has been
seen.
Recently I was asked to don my virus hunter's cap
and help solve a problem that had cropped up elsewhere on campus. A
particular PC had been causing trouble for some time, and someone
finally discovered that it was infected. The irony of the situation is
that anti-virus software existed on the computer, but was not being
used, and had not been used in quite a while. In fact, a significant
sum of money was spent replacing hardware components on this PC because
the virus simulated hardware problems. A number of people, including
myself, relearned a valuable lesson from this incident.
That
these incidents continue to occur, however, proves that this issue is
not taken very seriously by a large percentage of computer users. Every
few months an incident is reported involving a virus that would have
been avoided if basic prevention techniques had been applied. It seems
that we're constantly educating and reeducating key support people
about the virus threat to the campus.
I'll continue to do my part. I'll write articles, I'll give talks, I'll teach short courses, I'll answer E-mail and telephone questions, I'll update our anti-virus software tools, and I'll try to find better ways to educate people about viruses. I'll even continue to put on my flameproof suit and virus hunter hat to combat problems in the wild. I hope that I can encourage you to take a stand as well and begin to make virus awareness more of a proactive task than a reactive job.
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