Planning against viruses and worms and other malicious code

Most viruses and worms, which are sometimes called malware have the effect of:

Disrupting or delaying normal functionality
Changing configurations by rewriting code
Retrieving sensitive data

A virus infects a system through a host. For example, an application, an e-mail, or a file. A user action spreads the virus in a system. For example, opening an infected e-mail attachment. A worm does not require a host or a user action to infect a system. See the table for more information.

Table 1. Security impacts from viruses and worms
Security implementation	Security impact
Natural immunity	Avaya Linux-based servers do not support: Incoming or forwarding e-mail User Web browsing Network File System (NFS) or Common Internet File System (CIFS), formerly Server Message Block (SMB), file system sharing protocols
File permissions	The super user is the sole user with write permissions to standard program binaries. These write permissions to standard program binaries cannot be modified. Restricting write permissions to the super user results in limited virus infections in Linux OS.
Antivirus products	Avaya products are inherently secure against virus infections. You may use third party antivirus products. To ensure minimal impact to the end user, scan the system with the third party antivirus product when there is minimal load on the server.
Firewall	Unused ports are closed off, thereby reducing the attack surface.
Logs	Exhaustive logging allows malicious activity to be detected.
Access profiles	Provide granular control of admin user privileges.