Computer viruses are small programs intended to be installed on a computer without it's owners knowledge with malicious or criminal intent.

Many viruses are just nuisances, they do little or no harm. Some however are designed to steal passwords or credit-card details, allow remote access to your computer, hijack your computer for use in an attack on another computer or render your computer unusable.

Some virus exploit flaws in software to move from computer to computer but far more commonly their creators rely on the inexperience or lack of knowledge of the average computer user and try to trick people into installing viruses on their own computers unwittingly.

The most common methods for distributing viruses is to hide them in a program made available downloaded from the Internet or in an attachment to an e-mail. Upon running the program or attachment the virus is installed and the computer is infected.

If your EnServe has anti-virus services installed (optional) then it can scan shared folders on it's hard-drive and incoming e-mail for viruses.

In order to combat the latest viruses the anti-virus service on the EnServe must be updated regularly. There is an option on the admin menu to enable you to do this.