Virus protection by unix (was Re: To the Debian Project... )

[David Wright <d.wright@open.ac.uk>]

Quoting Keith G. Murphy (keithmur@mindspring.com):
> Art Lemasters wrote:
> > 
> [cut]
> >      BTW, I recently worked a contract for a corporation that uses
> > nothing but NT servers and workstations.  The machines were rebooted
> > every two or three days, and complete images were installed to them
> > once a week or more.  Granted, though, the employees there were actually
> > allowed to send and receive e-mail to their workstations via the
> > Internet with no UNIX server to protect them!
> > 
> Semi-serious question:
> 
> How does a UNIX server protect them against viruses (I assume that's
> what you mean)?  Do they die in the arid environment of the server?  ;-)

I think unix servers are generally virus-neutral. Most of the products
that claim to scan emails, for example, at gateways seem to be built
for NT and Netware. Perhaps this is one reason why so much anti-virus
scanning is left to the end-user, which makes it much more expensive
as well as hit-and-miss. (I for one have no idea how to scan a floppy/
email/downloaded file with a virus scanner.)

Cheers,

-- 
Email:  d.wright@open.ac.uk   Tel: +44 1908 653 739  Fax: +44 1908 655 151
Snail:  David Wright, Earth Science Dept., Milton Keynes, England, MK7 6AA
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