Furniture makers fend off computer viruses
By Brian Carroll -- Furniture Today, September 30, 2001
HIGH POINT — With the number and sophistication of computer viruses increasing, concerned furniture manufacturing executives are taking steps to protect data and back up mission-critical systems.
The rapid spread of two computer viruses in September, including one that heartlessly played on the recent terrorist attacks, caused some systems to freeze. No company reports serious or long-term damage, however.
Hooker Furniture's operations were disrupted on Sept. 19 by "NIMDA," a sophisticated worm/ virus combination that temporarily halted the furniture maker's shipping and processing. NIMDA used a variety of methods to recirculate itself and erase data on hard drives.
All of Hooker's operations were restored by the next day "with no loss of critical data or business systems," said Talmage Fish, vice president of information services. The company used antivirus software to prevent the virus's re-entry and to clean up the damage.
"It did require extensive technical manpower to eradicate the virus," Fish said.
At Century Furniture, neither NIMDA nor the W32/Vote@mm virus caused much downtime or damage, primarily because Century doesn't use Microsoft Exchange or related products, which are known for their security vulnerabilities. Century instead implemented SAP two years ago.
The company does, however, use Microsoft software, which Century "regularly updates with the latest patches available," according to John Perry, senior director of information technology.
But Century "takes any news of virus outbreaks seriously," Perry said. NIMDA was reported to the company by an executive's wife, who saw reports of it on national TV news. "We investigated the latest on the Internet and took evasive action by applying patches to prevent an outbreak," he said.
Perhaps the best thing any company can do, Perry said, is to educate its computer users. Century frequently reminds employees "not to open e-mail with any file from an unknown source."
The virus problem, however, will likely grow.
"A key role for any IT or IS department is to proactively protect their respective companies from such attacks," said Geoff Beaston, president of Fine Furniture Design and Marketing, which relies on the Internet to stay in constant contact with manufacturing in Shanghai, China.
"It is amazing the amount of new concerns we are all faced with in conducting business," he said.
Perry said the computer attacks are a cost of having such an open society.
"The Internet is much more open than our airports and national borders," he said. "There are a lot of malicious people who would like to disrupt us and our economy — not only internationally as a terrorist act, but the 17-year-old disaffected kid who starts something just to see what will happen."
The W32/Vote@mm worm, which struck Microsoft Outlook e-mail software users, enticed recipients to open its .exe file attachment by pleading for peace between America and Islam. Like many others, this worm e-mailed itself to all addresses in the Microsoft Outlook address book of users who opened it.
Several Web sites offer virus and worm updates, including those of Symantec and Microsoft.
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