Letter from a CIO: why Conficker won't hurt our company

Technology

You know a virus is making it in the news when your network’s users start asking you about it (instead of the latest round of "good news virus" hoaxes.) It's prudent for those in technical leadership roles to send out encouraging messages why nobody need panic. Here’s a template e-mail you can copy-and-paste, with versions for Windows, Linux and Mac infrastructures!

Conficker is certainly hitting the technical news, and now the mainstream media has come on board with talks of a “super virus” bringing networks to their knees come April 1st.

Now, perhaps you haven’t taken steps to protect yourself. If so, please do check out the link above for more information as well as free tools to help out.

Of course, if you’ve built up a robust and tight private network, whether spanning one or many sites, it’s time to tell your company about it.

Send the positive message that you and your team are proactive, you’ve insulated the company from current and future threats and most importantly, that your people just simply do not need to be concerned they will suffer data loss or downtime.

I did this today after receiving several concerned requests from staff asking if they need to be taking any precautions.

My message was simple, and you can emulate this pattern. Over the page I'll even reproduce it ready for copy-and-pasting with, of course, appropriate modification to suit your environment.

On page three you can also find two special variations for Linux and MacOS environments too! We're all-inclusive here at iTWire.

So, the pattern I used was:

* acknowledge that a new virus threat has been given publicity
* affirm the company's comittment to protecting data and systems
* note upfront the virus is not new, but has existed for some time and was in fact patched last year, and this patch has been installed
* discuss the precautions you have in place which protect your infrastructure from future, as-yet unknown, threats in general
* give some general advice on how staff can protect their home computers also

Turn over to copy-and-paste a ready-written e-mail for Microsoft Windows networks, then turn to page three for Linux and MacOS versions.



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