This day in age many churches are utilizing the resources the internet has to offer to spread the word and information on events to their partition, but they are unaware of the danger that their office computer is in from viruses and spyware attacks that are commonplace in the digital world.

If a church office computer contracts one of these viruses that data stored on your churches computer files can be compromised, stolen, or lost without virus protection in place. Statics show 80% of the time the church in question has not implemented any virus protection at all.

While these kind of attacks happen more often then most are aware of there are a few things that can be done to assure that your churches files and information is protected.

In order to help improve your church virus protection here are 10 ways to prevent hackers from infiltrating your system.

Install reliable anti-virus software (this is the best way to prevent viruses)

Never automatically open email attachments. Many times hackers will send a virus via email. All you have to do is open this email and your are infected

Scan all incoming email attachments before opening them. Anti-Virus protection will be able to alert you if any suspicious code exist within the attachment that could endanger your church data security

Configure anti-virus software to automatically boot when you start you computer. This works well because you will never forget to turn on the ant-virus software.

Update your anti-virus software frequently. By doing this church is assured protection from new viruses that arise.

Do not download programs from the Web from sites that you do not trust especially freeware or shareware sites, which are notorious for containing malicious scripts.

Do not boot with a disk in the drive. If the computer is booted with a disk in the drive it will automatically loads the disk. If the disk is infected it will load on to the computer without the option to scan it.

Do not share disk or usb memory drives. You do not know what or where the other person has been downloading from and you may get exposed.

You should always scan disks before using them. Anti-virus software will be able to determine whether or not a disk has been infected or not and in most cases remove the files that are corrupt.

Use common sense when using the internet. If you feel there is something wrong with a site or receive an email from someone you are not sure of their intent then chances are something is not right.

Following these 10 steps will substantially improve your church virus protection. By preventing a virus to infect your PC you protect your church and all your members. No church wants to find out that a malicious virus has wiped out all the office records. Utilizing these 10 steps will assure that this never happens.