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Many times in church offices, a malicious virus will be sent by email. The church secretary will often times open the email, not knowing it may put the system at risk. Eight times out of ten, the system has no anti virus software running, and the system gets damaged, and valuable information can be lost, or even stolen. To help improve your church virus protection, here are ten preventative measures you can take.

Use a high quality anti virus software. This point can not be stressed enough!

Make sure it is always turned on. The software will do you no good if it is not running.

Keep your software updated. If there is a new release, download it.

If you use floppy disks or a USB drive on public computers or a digital photo printing store make sure you check them for viruses. Public computers are known for not being up to date and protected.

Backup your information regularly. If you do get attacked by a virus, you’ll survive it easier if your information is saved somewhere else.

Only use text email. While HTML email is better looking it also can carry viruses.

Be careful with email attachments. Run your anti virus software before opening an email attachment from your church computer.

Only use downloaded freeware and shareware files with caution. Make sure you download them from well known and trusted sources.

Be careful about recieving files through instant messaging software, like AIM, or YIM. Only recieve the files if you know the person you are chatting with well.

Be on the look out for sites such as myspace or facebook. Never download anything from a person you don’t know well as it might contain a virus!

If you always follow these ten precautionary steps, you’ll have a much better chance of protecting your church computer from a virus, or harmful spyware.

The potential damage to a church computer network from malicious viruses can have an effect on many families. Often times the church member database can be hacked into, and personal information can be stolen, or altered. Make sure that you take every step possible in protecting your church systems, because it may be more damaging than you think.

A virus could completely whipe your records clean, and make things like attendance, tithing, and growth reporting difficult to track. The simplest, most important thing that you can do in regards to protecting your system, would be to get a reputable anti virus software, and pay whatever you have to pay for it.

Tyler Ellison has great experience in this field. You can read more free information on his blog Church Virus Protection.