"SOEST Network Security"
posted 09/30/2003 16:00

In the last month or so there have been many new viruses and worms
released.  We are being hit constantly by machines on the outside trying
to find exploitations.  Our virus scanner has been doing a good job
on the viruses and the firewall is blocking the ports that the
"worms" are trying to infiltrate.  Two weeks ago it was necessary to
shutdown the packets that allow "ping" in and out of SOEST.  We are
sorry for any inconvience but the network was at a crawl from the 
dramatic increase in this type of traffic generated from infected
machines outside of SOEST.

We believe that SOEST is fairly safe from these infections now but
there is something that we cannot control from within our network. 
For those people who travel with their computers,  it is very important
that your security updates are current and also your antivirus software 
and virus definitions.  We have had a few occurances of someone bringing 
an infected laptop back from travel, plugging it into the network and 
then infecting others.  We stopped an outbreak last night that luckily 
only moved through 6 machines.

If you take your computer from one place to another, it is particularly
important that you keep your security patches and antivirus definitions
up-to-date.  Always be sure to scan your system before plugging it into
a network.