Melissa spread with the rising sun, first hitting the Asia-Pacific region, which includes Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia, and then hitting Europe. By the time it hit North America, where I live, we knew a lot about it. We worked feverishly to stop it, some sites having more success than others.

With the increasing migration toward a network-centric computing model, threats to all computers grow in severity. The communications between various systems on a network or the Internet offer great potential to their use for work and research. The emergence and acceptance of networking standards from various engineering groups have helped to create the communications infrastructure we have come to rely on for much of our daily work lives.

These same infrastructure components and networking standards can be abused by attackers to create widespread damage as well. This can be capitalized on by malicious software to quickly lead to large scale problems.

Internet-based worms, such as Code Red, Sapphire, and Nimda, spread from their introduction point to the entire Internet in a matter of days or even hours. Along the way global routing was disrupted, many affected systems were rendered unusable or inaccessible, and a cascade of additional fallout problems emerged.

The challenges facing Internet-centric computing with respect to this threat are several-fold. They include identification of the likely sources of problems, such as the presence of the widespread software vulnerabilities needed by the worm in order to inflict abuse; the rapid detection of a worm emerging from the Internet, its behavior, and how to stop it; and the defenses needed to both contain a worm and protect the network from any threats that are yet to arrive.

Because worms act only to spread from system to system, they bring security concerns to everyone using the Internet. No system can hide from an aggressive worm. However, many of the characteristics of a worm can be used to defeat it, including its predictable behavior and telltale signatures. This is in contrast to individual attackers, who change their tactics every time, even if only subtly, and who have usually chosen a particular target for some clear reason.

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A government-funded spy agency could likely penetrate your security, should they be motivated to do so. Someone could drive a truck through the wall of your building and steal your computers. Old-fashioned ways are effective, too: there are many ways of coercing people into divulging information.

Even though there is no absolute computer security, relative computer security can be considered based on six factors:
• What is the importance of the information or resource being protected?
• What is the potential impact, if the security is breached?
• Who is the attacker likely to be?
• What are the skills and resources available to an attacker?
• What constraints are imposed by legitimate usage?
• What resources are available to implement security?

Breaking down security in this way changes the problem. Security is no longer a binary matter of secure or not-secure; it becomes a problem of risk management,”^ and implementing security can be seen as making tradeoffs between the level of protection, the usability of the resulting system, and the cost of implementation.

When you assess risks for risk management, you must consider the risks posed to you by others, and consider the risks posed to others by you. Everybody is your neighbor on the Internet, and it isn’t farfetched to think that you could be found negligent if you had insufficient computer security, and your computers were used to attack another site.

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In contrast to viruses, computer worms are malicious programs that copy themselves from system to system, rather than infiltrating legitimate files. For example, a mass-mailing email worm is a worm that sends copies of itself via email. A network worm makes copies of itself throughout a network, an Internet worm sends copies of itself via vulnerable computers on the Internet, and so on.

Trojans, another form of malware, are generally agreed upon as doing something other than the user expected, with that “something” defined as malicious. Most often, Trojans are associated with remote access programs that perform illicit operations such as password-stealing or which allow compromised machines to be used for targeted denial of service attacks. One of the more basic forms of a denial of service (DoS) attack involves flooding a target system with so much data, traffic, or commands that it can no longer perform its core functions. When multiple machines are gathered together to launch such an attack, it is known as a distributed denial of service attack, or DDoS.

While purists draw a firm distinction between viruses, worms, and Trojans, others argue that it is merely a matter of semantics and give the virus moniker to all viruses, worms, and Trojans. The term malware, a.k.a. malicious software, can most easily be used to describe viruses, worms and Trojans while satisfying both arguments.

Malware is an even more appropriate term when one considers spyware, adware, and and browser hijacking techniques that may not fit in any of the aforementioned virus, worm, or Trojan classifications. Thus, malware can be defined as any program, file, or code that performs malicious actions on the target system without the user’s express consent. This is in contrast to Sneakyware, which can best be described as any program, file, or code that the user agrees to run or install without realizing the full implications of that choice. One of the best examples of Sneakyware was Friendly Greetings, a greeting-card trick that exploited users’ willingness to say Yes without reading the licensing agreement. By doing so, they were blindly agreeing to allow the same email to be sent to all contacts listed in their address book.

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Install security patches. Vulnerabilities in software are constantly being discovered and they don’t discriminate by vendor or platform. It’s not simply a matter of updating Windows; at least monthly, check for and apply updates for all software you use.
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Use a firewall. No Internet connection is safe without one. Firewalls are necessary even if you have a dial-up Internet connection – it takes only minutes for a a non-firewalled computer to be infected.

Secure your browser. Many labor under the dangerous misconception that only Internet Explorer is a problem. It’s not the browser you need to be concerned about. Nor is it a matter of simply avoiding certain ‘types’ of sites. Known, legitimate websites are frequently being compromised and implanted with malicious javascript that foists malware onto visitors’ computers. To ensure optimum browsing safety, the best tip is to disable javascript for all but the most essential of sites – such as your banking or regular ecommerce sites. Not only will you enjoy safer browsing, you’ll be able to eliminate unwanted pop-ups as well.

Take control of your email. Avoid opening email attachments received unexpectedly – no matter who appears to have sent it. Remember that most worms and trojan-laden spam try to spoof the sender’s name. And make sure your email client isn’t leaving you open to infection. Reading email in plain text offers important security benefits that more than offset the loss of pretty colored fonts.

Treat IM suspiciously. Instant Messaging is a frequent target of worms and trojans. Treat it just as you would email.

Avoid P2P and distributed filesharing. Torrent, Kazaa, Gnutella, Morpheus and at least a dozen other filesharing networks exist. Most are free. And all are rife with trojans, viruses, worms, adware, spyware, and every other form of malicious code imaginable. There’s no such thing as safe anonymous filesharing. Avoid it like the plague.

Keep abreast of Internet scams. Criminals think of clever ways to separate you from your hard earned cash. Don’t get fooled by emails telling sad stories, or making unsolicited job offers, or promising lotto winnings. Likewise, beware of email masquerading as a security concern from your bank or other eCommerce site.

Don’t fall victim to virus hoaxes. Dire sounding email spreading FUD about non-existent threats serve only to spread needless alarm and may even cause you to delete perfectly legitimate files in response.

Remember, there’s far more good than bad on the Internet. The goal isn’t to be paranoid. The goal is to be cautious, aware, and even suspicious. By following the tips above and becoming actively engaged in your own security, you’ll not only be protecting yourself, you’ll be contributing to the protection and betterment of the Internet as a whole.

A software should have strength anti virus application, and security system, this is to avoid any destruction inside the system itself, its the same like having an anti virus protection for some symptoms such as herpes symptoms. Viruses both in symptoms and computer required serious threats and early detection and prevention before spreading widely.

A platform is located on your computer or local area network, which can be deployed as a Web application that is delivered to users around the world using a web server that connects via the Internet. Using a web browser as a client today is finding more and more accepted and used in many applications and products outside the platform to provide a better GUI. This led to the popularity of web applications. It is very important to understand delivery systems on the Internet to find the suitability of converting a desktop application in a Web application. Applications integration optimization techniques search engine became more popular with companies that are oriented marketing or sales, while a unit production may be less attractive to convert the existing application into a Web application.

Some few points that come to light over a desktop application and web applications.
Accessibility: a desktop application is available only on a local computer, while a Web application is available around the world.

Maintenance and updates: web applications that require little or no maintenance and are installed only once on the web server, while desktop applications should be made individually on each computer. Updates / compatibility issues with other are mostly by administrators of the hosting company as opposed to desktop applications. The maintenance of a web application is important paramount as the company puts all its eggs in one basket, uptime is not only necessary but essential to the implementation.

Safety: Line of work has its own set of risks such as hacking and viruses. The risk is higher compared to a desktop as a dysfunction office in May result in partial data loss. The crash of a web server may be having consequences beyond the control of a company.
Cost: Run a Web application includes recurring costs of web space and bandwidth usage, while the use Office is charged at once and has been known for less a period of time.
Connectivity: the reliability of Web applications is based on connectivity but you can use from anywhere in the world, rates of connectivity and adjusting the bandwidth may make it unnecessary in some areas. The lack of Internet access businesses in the end or side of the web server may cause unwarranted delays. Critical applications may suffer as a result of these failures.

The Web application over slow compared with the performance of desktop applications due to slower data transfer via the Internet. The speed of connectivity and bandwidth usage can be important factors.

The popularity of web applications is only due to accessibility, despite its limited functionality.