Hickory, N.C. – January 29, 2009- Todd Meche, network manager for St. Martin Parish School Board in St. Martinville, Louisiana, is happy to be a brand champion for AVG Anti-Virus. The Enterprise version of the software, AVG Network Edition, has made his job easier over the years, keeping the schools in his domain secure against viruses and other computer security threats. Meche estimates that over the last seven years he has encouraged hundreds of people to switch to the popular security product.

The story of how he came to be such a fan began in 2001, when he first joined the St. Martin Parish School Board.

“The school system was already using AVG Network Edition to protect more than 3,000 workstations across fourteen schools in the district,” said Meche. “Everything was running smoothly, and no-one ever seemed to have any problems. In fact, I didn’t know how good we had it until I was in a meeting at an administration conference and heard horror stories about other programs. Other network managers were telling me that the big name brands like McAfee and Norton were causing them major problems.”

“Not only were they complaining about the amount of system resources these programs were hogging, slowing entire networks down, but they were also concerned by the sheer time it took to maintain them on a day-to-day basis.”

“Many people were surprised that I wasn’t joining in the chorus of complaints, so they all wanted to know what we were using. I was happy to tell them just how great AVG Network Edition has been.”

In fact, as Meche reflected on the years he has trusted his networks’ security to AVG Network Edition, he estimated that he’s recommended to over two hundred people that they switch to the product.

More than 1,000 teachers and faculty work for St. Martin Parish and over the years, many have asked him what anti-virus products he recommends for their home computers. “Every time someone asks what to use to protect their home computers, I always recommend AVG Free Edition.”

“AVG Does Its Job So I Can Do Mine”

Since 2001, Meche has kept his AVG Network Edition installations upgraded to the latest versions to ensure the protection kept pace with the growing threats, and he’s always been pleased with the results.

“We started out with AVG 6.0 and we kept upgrading whenever a new version became available,” said Meche. “Now we’re using the 8.0 edition. AVG just gets better and better with the release of each version.”

He went on to explain that “AVG saves me time, because I don’t ever have to go back and change anything with it. It manages itself. It doesn’t have a lot of fancy options that no-one uses, and that’s just fine with me. AVG does what matters – it does its job effectively so I can focus on mine.”

A Great Product and a Great Supplier

Meche acknowledged that another reason he is a fan of AVG is because of Walling Data, the distributor from whom he purchases his AVG licenses.

Walling Data is the longest-standing and highest-volume distributor of AVG Technologies solutions in North America. Walling Data is also the only distributor to offer all its customers – resellers and end-users – free, unlimited, U.S.-based pre- and post-sales support.

Meche was impressed with that Free support offer, especially when it was coupled with generous educational discounts Walling Data offered on the purchase of the software.

“AVG is so easy to manage that I’ve have rarely needed tech support,” said Meche. “But with thousands of workstations and more than a dozen sites, we’ve encountered a few issues here and there. All I had to do was pick up the phone and call Walling Data’s tech support team. They’re always polite, friendly, and easy to work with.”

“When it comes time to renew our licenses, we always shop around, but we’ve never come across a supplier who’ll give us a better deal than Walling Data.”

Today, Meche is still eager to share his enthusiasm for AVG Anti-Virus and Walling Data, adding: “We have the best of both worlds. AVG is the most efficient and powerful security product out there, and Walling Data gives us great pricing and free support. What’s not to like?”

For more information about how to purchase AVG Anti-Virus, with Walling Data’s Unlimited US based support included at no cost, please visit http://www.avgantivirus.com

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About Walling Data

Founded in 1994, N.C.-based Walling Data is a value-added technology distributor of technology products for resellers, small businesses, and education and government institutions. Walling Data was the nation’s first distributor of AVG security products and today is the highest-volume distributor for the product in North America, with more than 50,000 satisfied customers. Walling is also the only value-added distributor for Cymphonix Network Composer, an award-winning device that helps companies control and monitor users compliance with internet usage policies. Additionally, the company has recently become a distributor of CyberPatrol’s parental control and business-grade web filtering solutions. Walling Data provides free, unlimited, U.S.-based phone and “we-do-it-for-you” remote support for all of its customers. For more information, visit www.wallingdata.com and www.avgantivirus.com

About AVG TechnologiesAVG is a global security solutions leader protecting more than 80 million consumers and small business computer users in 167 countries from the ever-growing incidence of web threats, viruses, spam, cyber-scams and hackers on the Internet. Headquartered in Amsterdam, AVG has nearly two decades of experience in combating cyber crime and one of the most advanced laboratories for detecting, pre-empting and combating Web-borne threats from around the world. Its free online, downloadable software model allows entry-level users to gain basic anti-virus protection and then to easily and inexpensively upgrade to greater levels of safety and defense in both single and multi-user environments. More information is available at www.avg.com.

Media Contact: Ashlie Lanning, alanning@wallingdata.com, 919-459-8158

Far too many company and household computers become infected with viruses annually, and the affects of these infections can be devastating to the user. Since there are so many ways a virus can enter your computer’s system, it’s important that you know how to block off those entrances. Here are several ways to decrease the chances of your computer becoming infected:

-Don’t solely rely on anti-virus software, although you should have it installed. Be sure to update often to detect and protect your computer from the most recently created viruses.

- It is also good for your computer to install a spyware, malware, and adware removal application.

-Read the headlines. Stay on top of the news to educate yourself about new viruses

-Try not to open an e-mail attachment until you are sure it is safe. Make sure you know the person or why it may be sent to you.

-Once again, surf the web for news about viruses so you know common subject lines and file extensions relative to those viruses.

-Disable automatic attachment viewing in your e-mail settings.

-Set your Word and Excel settings so that Macros are disabled when a file is opened up for viewing.

- Use search engines that are well-known for generating results relevant to search terms.

A site is probably safe if a lot of people have linked to it, but keep in mind that this isn’t always the case. This way, your chances of being directed to a site that hosts a virus is less likely.

-Make sure you set your security settings to ‘high’ in your web browser.

-Try to avoid downloading free applications from unverifiable websites

-Configure your settings so that you can always view file extensions.

-The following are examples of file extensions to be suspicious of when they show up in e-mails.

ADE, ADP, BAS, BAT, CHM, CMD, COM, CPL, CRT, DLL, EXE, HLP, HTA, INF, INS, ISP, JS, JSE, LNK, MDB, MDE, MSC, MSI, MSP, MST, OCX, PCD, PIF, POT, REG, SCR, SCT, SHB, SHS, SYS, URL, VB, VBE, VBS, WSC, WSF, WSH

It is easy to tell yourself you will regularly take these measures to maintain your computer’s health, but it is also quite easy to forget. This is often how viruses end up finding their way into your computer. If you’re running a business, your best bet is to seek IT support from an IT consulting firm.

Here’s A Good Way To Keep Your Business Protected From my previous article about Spring cleaning for your PC, this one is sort of a continuation. Since computers are something most people ‘set up and forget’, I figured I’d continue down that track with some more of what I consider the basics. This is very important for restaurant owners and other retail business owners out there. whether you are using the latest restaurant POS equipment or not, computer problems can greatly affect your business’ performance. By following these few reminders, you’ll be able to keep your business in tip top shape. 1. Computers Needs Regular Maintenance. As you change the oil of your car, your computer also needs regular maintenance to keep it running smoothly and extend the usable life. Tools like disk cleanup, defragmentation, and updating your virus protection files are necessary to keep your machine running at its’ best and to ward off small problems before they become huge. 2. An Anti-virus Software is A Must. As I always say, an antivirus software is a very important piece of software you should have. By now you should probably be aware of the attacks coming from the internet and sneaky infected emails. Anti-virus software will notify you before you open the infected file and release the virus to do damage. One key point to remember is anti-virus software cannot repair the damage a virus has already done. You also need to update your anti-virus software monthly so it’s using the latest protection against sneaky viruses that threatens your computer system. 3. Backup Backup Backup. It’s one of the most important things you should be doing to keep your file in safe place. CD-RW and DVD Disks, Tape Drives, Memory Sticks and USB External Hard Drives are all good medias to use for backing up. And once your backup plan good to go, use it regularly! Your computer will eventually retire someday. I kinda hate to tell you this, but it doesn’t really matter how new or old your computer is, it will retire one day. Like any other computers, the one you use is also a machine. But sadly, machines don’t last a lifetime. The data your computer holds can be priceless to replace. Think of all those financial data, e-mail contacts in your email address book, pictures, recipes, and so on. There will come a day you’ll open your computer wait for it to load and get disappointed because it has already retired! At that exact moment you’ll begin to realize how important it is to have a BACKUP. What are you going to do to backup all of your computer data? I find it surprising that most people don’t have a backup plan. You will never realize just how much you have on your computer until it is gone! You need a backup plan. In a restaurant, having a backup plan is a must. Why? Because there are so many business info you will be needing for future references, like employee and customer info, data on the products or services of the retail establishment, and so on. To be able to effectively track down sales and inventories, a reliable restaurant POS system must be used. And one way to protect their POS system is to maintain it in good condition. 4. Let An Expert Do What They Do Best. If your computer needs service, seek out a trained, qualified technician. Your friends’ son may know a bit about fixing your problem, but many times the problems even gets worse. This may cost you a lot of time and money in the end. Remember, your computer system is the ‘central nerve’ of your business. Trained, qualified technician’s are experts in their field and will have the necessary skills and resources to properly fix your problems in a timely, cost effective way.

While checking the Avast! website, I found a summary report done by them to their customers. It’s a report of a survey that they done after a customer got infected by a virus.

According to the virus summary report, 42.98% of the customers said the virus that infected their computer came from the internet and 41.59% of them, don’t know from where they got the virus. While the remaining customers said they got it from a program from a friend or from infected backup.

What can we know from this report?

First of all, we know that 41.59% of the customers don’t have any knowledge about PC security or less knowledge about it because they don’t even know how they got infected.

Secondly, most of the viruses came from the Internet. As you can see, Internet contains lots of information but at the same time it is dangerous for those who don’t have sufficient knowledge on how to protect themselves and their PC from online threats.

The remaining percents said they got it from a program from a friend or infected backup and these show that they didn’t scan the program before copying it to their PC and they seldom update their anti-virus virus definition.

It’s very important for us to update the definition in order for the anti-virus to detect newer threats.

From the same report, 47.13% didn’t succeed in removing the virus and 38.52% used a virus remover. Why they didn’t succeed in removing it? In my opinion, there are several reasons.

1. You don’t know how to you get infected.

2. You didn’t do any research on the Internet on how to remove it.

3. You assume that the anti-virus or the virus remover can remove every viruses that exist in the whole world

4. You think that spyware,adware and rootkit are types of virus and they all are the same.

5. You didn’t update your virus definition.

However,45.33% of the customers update their virus definition every week and 33.78% will update it as soon as a new one is available. This is a good news because they know that they need to update it.

There are lots of people around the whole world using the Internet but only less than half have anti-virus installed. It’s sad actually but it’s a fact. From this part, only half of them have anti-adware, anti-spyware, and firewall installed into their system.

But, from this half, Only half of them have the knowledge how to protect their computer from online threats.

So, which part are you?

Let’s talk a little about the impact of viruses, Internet related threats and how they effect your computer and privacy.

First off, is it really necessary to have anti-virus and firewall software installed on your computer? Afterall, with only 200 new threats created daily, who really cares? Is it really that big of a deal if hackers are able to access your computer, look through your data, user names, passwords, and account information? Seriously, is identitiy theft really that important to you? Or what about the viruses that cause your computer to go so slow you think you will never be able to load your Internet browser. Why should you worry about malware that can cause your system files to be destroyed or your favorite family photos stored on your computer to disappear in an instant? Does it concern you that your email can be sent to thousands of spam sites and pop-ups are all over your screen offering you software to fix your computer?

Any idea what causes these types of issues? How about malware, which broken down is short for malicious software such as viruses, trojans, worms, rootkits, spyware, adware, I think you get the point. Oh wait, I forgot, you have a customized super sized computer that is not vulnerable to viruses. When I hear people tell me this, I tend to wait and act surprised when they come back saying, “oh no, I got a virus”.

It does not matter how sophisticated your computer is, you are vulnerable to malware! If you don’t have internet security software installed on your pc, you are at risk of being infected with viruses, spyware and even hackers that want nothing more than to steal your information.

So what should you do now that you already have viruses on your computer? Well you could download the latest internet security software and hope it will detect, delete or repair the infected files. Many times you will have to do a re-format of your harddrive which will cause you to lose everything on your computer so be sure to save what you want first. If you do a re-format, it has to be done properly, or it will not delete the viruses. I would recommend you to contact your local computer shop.

Although Internet security and anti-virus software will protect you against these threats, no software is guaranteed to block 100% of all malware. Many of these threats are found on websites that you visit and files that you download such as video’s, music and pictures. If you use peer to peer file sharing, I am sure you already know all about viruses and spyware. Want a hint? Stop downloading from those sites and you will stop getting viruses.

Okay, here are a couple internet security software programs I recommend that offer the best protection, features and support. First is Security Shield 2008, this is a rebrand of F-Secure and is absolutely amazing and easy to use. Another is Kaspersky Internet Security, another well designed software program with hourly updates.

Copyright (c) 2009 OnlineBizU.com

As an online business owner, you face treacherous Internet security risks every single time you’re online. Viruses, hackers, and spam await you at every turn. The reality is that these threats are always going to be a component of being online and doing business online. Unfortunately, they seem to be here to stay.

Given that, there are a number of precautions you can take to make yourself, your business and the visitors to your site as safe as possible. Here are 8 tactics proven to enhance your Internet security:

1. Virus Protection. Make sure you have the latest virus updates installed on your computer and let the software thoroughly scan your entire computer daily to ensure that no viruses successfully planted themselves on your hard drive. Set your virus checker to scan your email when it downloads, as well.

I use AVG Free to scan both my computer and my email. They also have a fee-based version that provides complete Internet protection. McAfee and Norton also offer similar products.

For spyware and malware protection, I use CounterSpy. The company that makes this software also has a new product to protect against viruses and spyware called VIPRE.

2. Spam Blocker. I have a spam blocker that I use with Outlook called Cloudmark Desktop that does a great job of helping me train my email program to recognize spam. What I like about this program is that the program users tell Cloudmark what spam arrives in their inboxes, and the programmers update Cloudmark accordingly to recognize those kinds of emails. Other spam blocker programs include IHateSpam and MailWasher.

3. Web hosting Spam Blocker. To block spam before it even hits my Outlook inbox, one of my hosting accounts offers Postini spam blocking on my server. I pay a few dollars extra each month to add this service, but it is well worth it, as it routinely blocks at least 100 emails per day that are spam. I always have the option to log into that account if I am missing an email that may have ended up there accidentally, and I can “whitelist” the sender so that it goes though without a problem the next time. Every night this service sends me a list of emails that are questionable (i.e. the service isn’t sure if it’s spam), and I quickly scan them to approve any that have been misidentified.

4. Email Address Spam. One of the easiest ways your email address gets added to massive lists of spammed email addresses is by including a clear link to your email address on your website. Spambots routinely patrol the Internet looking for readily available email addresses to harvest online. Even if you have the link “cloaked” by saying “click here to email”, which will bring up your email address in the visitor’s email program, the spambot is able to read the HTML sourcecode and harvest the email address.

Instead, remove your email address off of all of your websites. Use a contact form for people to email you that incorporates CAPTCHA technology (where the form filler has to read a graphic representation of a word or set or numbers to prove that s/he isn’t a spambot). I use the free version of Freedback for this task.

5. Discussion List Spam. If your email address must appear on any discussion lists, blog posts, or forum postings, use a free email address like the ones available at Gmail or Yahoo. In this way, you protect your “real” email address from being picked up by spambots.

6. Catch-All Email Address. If your web host company permits, create a catch-all email address that receives all email not specifically marked for a set POP email address or email forward you may have set up. When you sign up for someone’s free giveaway, for example, that will add you to their marketing list you can then enter an email address that reminds you of the site or giveaway where you used it.

For example, if I’m signing up for Jane Smith’s free dog training tips report, I might use dogtraining@mydomain.com, which will then end up in my catch-all domain email address. In this way, you don’t have to give away your “real” email address, and you can determine if the list holder sells or rents your email address to another. So, then, if you suddenly begin to get emails to your dogtraining@mydomain.com address from a dog food company you’ve never heard of, you’ll know that Jane sold or rented your email address to them.

7. Firewalls and Hackers. Make sure that you are using Windows firewall protection, at a minimum, to protect your computer from being hacked while you’re online. Or, use a free firewall like ZoneAlarm. You can also upgrade for a fee to get enhanced protection.

If you use a wireless router, be sure to set a password to secure it so that anyone passing by your home or office cannot hijack your signal and potentially hack your computer. I was resetting the wireless connection on my laptop just last week and discovered that there were 3 unsecured wireless connections in my neighborhood. I live in a residential section with no businesses, so I know that these were unsecure wireless routers in my neighbors’ homes.

8. Secure Server. If you’re selling something online, either your website hosting account or your shopping cart provider needs to have a security certificate so that any monetary transactions can be made over a secure server. You can check to see if your checkout process is secure by looking for https:// in the address window of your browser when browser when you are on the payment page of your site/shopping cart. Some browsers will also show a gold locked padlock icon when you are on a secure server.

I had to purchase a security certificate from my hosting company for my membership site, as the secure server wasn’t built into the shopping cart that is integrated into the membership site software. If you use Paypal or some version of 1ShoppingCart.com, you are safe, as your customers’ transactions are being carried over a secure server.

When you make sure that your computer and email are protected from spam, viruses, malware and the like, your customers are then safe when you email them or upload something to your site for them to access. Responsible online business owners need to take every precaution available to them to enhance Internet security for all involved.

What does an anti virus software program do? It removes virus and other such malicious software programs from your computer. Most anti virus programs come with an auto protection option that protects your computer in real time. This feature ensures that any and every virus that infects your compute is removed before it does any long term damage. Reputed anti virus protection programs are updated regularly by its developers. The updates are usually made available on the web. Many programs that offer comprehensive protection often provide a registry cleaner and registry protector as well. However, the primary focus of these software applications is to secure your computer from viruses.

You can opt for a single program offering comprehensive protection against viruses and spyware. In the same way, you can also opt for different programs if the idea of two solutions sounds better than a single one. Both programs will protect your registry.

Why do people opt for independent registry cleaner programs? Your registry is the most important part of your operating system. It deserves special, unique and independent protection. Only registry cleaner programs can provide the level of protection that your computer’s registry requires. Rather than letting multiple programs make a hash of the task of protecting your registry, it makes sense to use a single program that offers the best possible protection. It is a mistake to rely on complicated and cumbersome programs to protect your registry. Relying on lighter and simpler registry cleaner programs is a much better option.

A good anti-virus is crucial in order to protect your computer from online threats. However, even if you own the best anti-virus in the world, it is meaningless if you didn’t update the virus definition.

Virus definition is used to detect viruses or what we called “virus signature”. By using this kind of detection,anti-virus software can detect a lot of viruses that have the same signature code.

For example, let’s say there are two viruses. Virus A and Virus B. Both of these viruses are in the same family. Hence, both of them are using the same signature code inside their code. Therefore the anti-virus can detect both of them. You can say that this type of detection is more accurate than the heuristic analysis detection.

Another type of detection used by anti-virus is called heuristics analysis. This type of detection however, sometimes will marked a non-virus file as one. So, it’s not that accurate.

Heuristics analysis uses something like behavior monitoring and that means it monitors the suspected file behavior and see how it reacts or how it acts. There are two ways on how it monitors the suspected file. First of all, the anti-virus will check the file instruction and if the file instruction is to delete important file system, it will marked it as a threat.

Secondly, heuristic detection will put the suspected file into a virtual environment and will see how it reacts.

Updating your anti-virus definition is very important to ensure that you’re protected from the latest online threats. New viruses emerge everyday and therefore, your virus definition is your asset to fight them.

Try to discipline yourself to update it every time new updates come out. There are some people who never update their virus definition from the first time they bought the software.

So, choose to protect yourself, your PC and your privacy everyday.

In this era of technological phenomena it’s vital to protect your personal computer as well as confidential information.  Whether you have state of the art computer protection or simple 15 dollar virus protection software, you need to make sure you’re using something. Just like career criminals in the real world, the internet is crawling with cyber criminals, without some sort of protection you could be a victim of fraud, or even worse, identity theft. There’s a variety of protection and virus removal software available depending on your price range, user control, and also the kind of protection your pc needs.

Gary Warner, Director of Computer Forensics, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UK) said – bogus postcards circulating on the Internet to reach e-mail inboxes globally contain links that lead to the PC virus – Zeus Bot, as reported by Science Daily on July 25, 2009. He also said the phony postcards direct recipients to follow a link to view its contents, however, the moment the click button is pressed; the Zeus Bot virus unleashes itself on the users’ PCs. Thereafter when infection sets in, the malware enables cyber criminals to intercept banking passwords along with account numbers, and e-mail as well as other sensitive account details of users. Security experts cautioned that users getting e-mails which are allegedly sent to them from a bank or websites like eBay should not click on any link provided in them instead they type the URL of the website from where the message arrives into their browser’s address bar and directly access the site.

There are a variety of viruses out there, one type of virus will attempt to use the system as a platform to spread itself to other contacts on the infected computer user’s MSN contact list and saved email addresses. It can do so by sending messages to your friends and families and entice them to click on normal-looking links to malicious websites. Even files that you have downloaded and plan to forward to your peers might also get infected with the viruses. They can cause of a lot of damages to your PC if they are not removed early. Some viruses may act as a key logger, a monitoring device to record all the keystrokes that you type on your keyboard as well as destroying all the data in your hard disks. Some unfortunate users who have had their systems infected have lost there entire hard drive; passwords and credit card numbers stolen for identity theft.

The best way to protect yourself is to invest in some sort of protection software. That way even when friends and family are using your computer, you are always protected.  If you plan on using the internet a lot and download music, movies, and games, it’s not a bad idea to find a pc scan software to run a self check every few days just to be sure.  You can find a variety of spyware removal and antivirus software at www.removalantivirus.com –  Free Scans

These days it is a must to have a good, reliable virus protection program. There happens to be a many good free virus protection software packages out on the internet today. The only way to protect our pc today is using software that acts like a antidote to the disease. By using this software you can take preventive measures of stopping the disease before it infects the system. Removable media such as cds, floppy disks, usb keys that are infected and used in another system can carry the virus and infect the other machine. If you computer is infected with a virus you will need to remove the virus as soon as possible otherwise it can infect the system completely and spread to others. If a computer is infected by a virus, the computer needs to be scanned by virus scanning software. When surfing the internet most likely you been infected with a Trojan, virus, or some type of spyware, according to many virus detection agencies, the unprotected PC is infected on average within 20 minutes of normal internet usage. Many systems get infected every day, you must take safety measures or your system might get infected, and the virus might corrupt your data on your system. A Computer Worm is a self replicating program — the first worm to gain wide attention was the Morris Worm this infected a large number of computers and earned its writer 400 hours of community service and over $10000 in fines. When a virus infects you computer it can replicate itself, use up system resources, allow a user remote access, record keystrokes to the infected computer, it also has the ability to destroy personal data. You must take precautions because when you download it may contain spyware, adware or viruses, spyware and adware can collect personal data, record your browsing habits and no more about you. Ad and Spyware are programs that are automatically installed on your computer. When your computer is infected with a virus they are designed to alter your normal computer functions and spyware infections are used to spy on you, one way they do this is by recording your personal information. Many times adware, viruses and spyware find what is called a “back door” to install and replicated itself you in your computer.Downloading may sometimes cause error on the system or the entire computer system may crash. Many spyware or viruses are downloaded when downloading software and music. Many viruses can lay dormant without you knowing this, since you don’t know it is there it can attack at any moment when least expect it, it could attack when typing a report and downloading important. Whether you have learned your lesson from a past experience or not, try not to download unwanted files or open email messages sent to you by people you don’t know. Many people do all of this without any real understanding of just how vulnerable they are each time they are on the internet. Try to take precautions, find reputable software and install it to protect your system. There is free software on the web that will protect your system.