Tips to protect your computer from cyber threats

BY OLANZO PALMER
VN STAFF WRITER

In the cyber world, you never know that you are truly safe.

Any email, website, or anything that you download can contain some type of virus. Even with a virus protection program, viruses get updated and become smarter and are able to still get onto your computer or phone.

There are viruses that can ruin your computer or people could steal information or many other harmful things.

It’s Zaahid Muhammad’s job to stop them.

A Detroit Mercy grad and current cyber security threat analyst at automotive supplier Delphi, Muhammad wants to give advice on scams that are out there and how to know to spot them.

“Recently, we've seen a real uptake and phishing scams and attackers using information that you think that they wouldn't have, but they do because it's just public information and utilizing that against their victims,” he said. “So, one of the biggest things you can do is when you receive information or you think something's a little out of order, really check and make sure. A lot of attacks that we see nowadays that are directed at the people are mainly focused in the social engineering and that's one of the biggest things today that we see.”

So, the question that comes up is, how can you protect yourself from these harmful viruses on the internet?

The truth is, there is no sure-fire way to protect yourself from viruses on your computer or phone.

There are preventative things that you can do so you can reduce the risk of having harmful viruses on your device.

You should start off by installing an antivirus or malware software onto your computer. Those things will continue to scan your computer and look for any malware that will appear and delete malware.

Afterward, you should always keep your malware software up to date because viruses always advance, so your malware software have to be able to fight back.

Sometimes the malware software doesn't catch everything on its own Auto Check, so sometimes you have to do a full manual scan yourself. This insures that the software goes through every file on your computer to make sure it is not infected. Though this will take a longer time, it's better safe than sorry.

Next you want to keep your operating system up-to-date as well, because having a old operating system couldn't leave your computer very vulnerable to viruses and your security won't be up to date.

When going on to WiFi, you want to make sure that it's a secure network. On a week on secure network people can send viruses through those networks and have access to your computer without you knowing.

Always before you click on a download link, make sure that that's life is safe. Many sites on the internet contain viruses from Simply going on to the website, but also viruses that you can get from clicking on random links and download buttons.