A few months ago I was attending a conference in Orlando. It was cold by Orlando standards, and the locals, mindful of their dependence on tourism during a recession, were apologetic - that is, especially hospitable. It was a productive meeting and I had a bounty of business cards and URLs to check out. An hour before leaving the hotel for the meeting’s second day, I connected to the hotel network and browsed a few sites. One of the sites, an engaging blog, featured a lively set of comments with a blog post, so I absentmindedly clicked through the comments. I paused to answer a knock at the door, and returned to find that a bit of malware had begun to take over my Windows notebook.
[/color]This preamble explains the Windows-centric character of this blog post. The principles would be similar for non-Windows platforms, but the particulars would vary.[/size]
[/color]The moments when malware is rifling through your process table are not conducive to lucid contemplation, but that’s the precise moment you must don your First Responder hat. Taking the right steps early on in the infection can save hours of later remediation. These steps may be routine for full time malware warriors, but network security is only one duty among many for the typical SMB network administrator.[/size]
