What To Do When A Virus Alert Pops Up On One Or More Of Your Business' Workstations

Having a virus alert pop up on one or more of your workstations can be downright terrifying for business owners. If you're going through this problem right now, read this quick guide to find out how you should act to save your data and protect your equipment.

Disconnect

The first thing you should do is completely disconnect your infected computers from each other and the internet.

The reason for this is two-fold. The first is that viruses often travel through shared networks in order to infect other workstations. Disconnecting the infected workstation now could help to prevent this from happening.

Secondly, powering down the computer completely or at least physically disconnecting it from the internet is a must. This is because virus types differ. Some are only there to prevent you from getting work done, while others will ransom the use of your system back to you. However, the worst of them is when a computer's data is stolen by the virus and send back to the originator of the virus. This can be devastating for people who own a business, and something you should prevent at all costs.

Run Full Scan

If you got a virus alert then you had anti-virus software on the infected computers. Run a full scan on all computers that were connected to the same network immediately. Any positives should also be disconnected from the network and the internet right away.

If you don't have anti-virus software on all of your computers, you should assume the worst. Without any layer of protection, anything could be happening to your data right now. In this instance, disconnect all computers from the internet. Ideally, you would also remove them from the local network, but as you likely still need to commit to business as usual, you can maintain the local network of uninfected computers for the interim.

Contact Specialist

Lastly, you're going to need an IT specialist to help you with this problem. Sometimes anti-virus software can squash viruses before they become a big problem, but if you have multiple infected computers, chances are it's already too late for that. In this case, it's up to the IT professional to scan your system with business-grade software and to eliminate the virus themselves. In the case that the virus can't be eliminated, your IT specialist can help you to recover the data on those computers and transfer them to new workstations to get you back to work as fast as possible.

For more information about IT repair, visit a site like totalsecuritysystems.org.