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Five of the most common computer viruses can put a damper on your day-to-day work environment. If you are unprepared for such an event, then you could face a severe virus that can cause chaos to your system. This means headaches such as file deletion, loss of data, and a widespread infection to every device you might use for work.

Just like a snowflake, not every virus looks the same. These five may not have the power of Ransomware or Malware, but they can still get under your cyber-skin. Before you defeat your enemy, you must get to know them.

1. Resident Virus- This is the type of computer virus that hides and stores itself within the computer memory. Thus allowing it to infect any file that is run by the computer, depending on the program of the virus.

2. Direct Action Virus- Direct Action is considered a cyber-cousin of Resident. By attaching itself to a particular type of file (ex: EXE or COM files) is how it does the most damage. When the action is carried out, it is brought to life. It searches for similar files in the directory to spread to.

3. Boot Sector Virus- File this one under “sneaky dangerous”. In the 1990s, when floppy disks were all the rage, Boot Sector was at the top of the virus charts. Every now and then, you can still find them on USB drives and in email attachments.

4. Overwrite Virus- This is more frustrating than it is destructive, but nonetheless it needs to be on your radar. Overwrite will delete the contents of any file which it infects. It can infect standalone files, as well as whole sections of software. The only way to remove the virus is to delete the file itself. Of course, this means losing its contents.

5. Cavity Virus- And you thought your last trip to the dentist was painful? This “spacefiller” virus can be more sophisticated than the four listed above. It attempts to install itself inside of the file that it’s infecting. Nowadays, this type of virus is extremely rare due to the difficulty of writing this type of virus and the limited number of possible hosts.

The best way to avoid these five nasty, diverse, viruses is by taking the necessary steps to protect yourself. If your systems get infected, you are looking at a potential loss of data that can cripple your organization.