As expected, the purveyors of various kinds of malware have jumped on the popularity of the latest installment of the popular vampire movie "Twilight; New Moon" that premiered today. They are taking advantage of unsuspecting web searchers who are looking for "free" photos, wallpaper and screensavers for their computers. Instead of being able to download the "free" stuff, they are directed to a website that loads malware onto your computer, tries to get you to buy a fake antivirus program or lunches a phishing attack on you.

Take the time to educate your employees about the dangers of surfing for something for "free" on your company's computers. A dangerous virus, worm or other type of malware running loose on your computer network can have serious operational and financial impacts to your company. The Ultimate Malware Protection Guide will help you protect your computers.

The other day in my computer security class a student asked me if he could test a program that he downloaded off the Internet. Per lab procedure we took a test PC and isolated it from the rest of the network. The program he had scans the PC for information on users that have previously logged on to that PC. The program then displays up to the last ten users and asks if you want to crack their passwords. After receiving my permission he launched the password cracker tool. It took it 4.5 seconds to crack my ten digit numeric password (I have since changed it). That is 10,000,000,000 (ten billion!) different combinations in under five seconds. Other user's passwords took minutes and some hours and it still didn't have anything after chugging all night.

In order to protect your computer systems and networks, make sure your users create strong passwords. Not only do these protect your data, but they may end up protecting the reputation of your company.

• More on Creating Strong Passwords

There are a lot of good antivirus programs that perform very well at catching and stopping viruses and other malware before they infect your computer. But what do you if your computer does get infected? How do you remove the malware?

AV-Comparatives.org recently published a Malware Test Removal report on sixteen of the most popular antivirus programs and their ability to remove malware and potentially dangerous "leftovers" from an infected system. The results were disappointing in that none of the antivirus systems performed very well in this respect.

None of the products performed "very good" in malware removal or removal of leftovers, based on those 10 samples. eScan, Symantec and Microsoft (MSE) were the only products to be good in removal of malware AND removal of leftovers.

Until the removal piece of the antivirus software catches up to the detection piece, we are left to rely upon the computer professionals and backups to protect our information assets.

Hopefully your business computers are protected by an antivirus program that can stop viruses from spreading and remove them from infected PCs. This is good planning and part of a comprehensive approach to protect your information assets. But have you thought about what you would do if your business was attacked by the H1N1 "swine flu" virus? How would you contain the spread of this disease?

Your comprehensive disaster recovery plan addresses how to continue business operations if a fire or other disaster interrupts normal operations. It should also address a pandemic as well. Just like you have backups of your computer files, you should have backups for your personnel. Cross training employees to perform different job functions will provide the backup you need. Do it now before people start getting sick.

But how about employees that are not sick but don't want to (nor should they) come to work when everyone else is dropping-like-flies? Telecommuting can save your business and protect your employees that are still healthy. Telecommuting takes some planning and practice but it can be done with a small investment in equipment and software. Even if you don't buy it right away, developing a list of equipment, software and a project plan for implementation can save days of down-time.

• How to Write a Disaster Recovery Plan
• Work From Home - Is Telecommuting Right for Your Office?
• How to Decide If You Can Work At Home