This past week has seen Conficker wake up.  One of the suggested things it will do is flood the internet with spam.  That's just what we need.  More spam.

"Windows PCs infected with the Conficker worm have turned into junk mail-spewing robots capable of sending billions of spam messages a day, a security company warned today."

-- ComputerWorld, Conficker botnet could flood Web with spam 

"According to Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based antivirus firm, yesterday's update to Conficker, which in some cases was accompanied by the Waledac spam bot, has resulted in a floodtide of junk e-mail."

-- ComputerWorld, Conficker botnet could flood Web with spam

 

This could easily flood the email world with billions of email messages.  That's right... Billions.  This causes lots of lost time and power and ultimately wasted revenue.  Examples like this show why we need to be vigilant when it comes to fighting viruses and spam.

Recently, one of our clients was hit with a virus that started spamming the world.  In the grand scheme of things, little damage was done, but the issues and inconvenience should and could have been avoided.

As IT professionals we need to lead by example.  Here are a few things that can be done to help.

• Make sure all of our clients are running proper software and regularly performing scans. 
• Avoid taking media home and allowing it back into the network. 
• Ensure each and every server on the network has anti-virus technology on and running.  Check them manually!
• Educate your user community about symptoms and issues to watch for.  Also instruct them to immediately remove a suspected computer from the network.