Worm attacks should worry system builders

Zotob worm attack on ABC, Caterpillar, Daimler Chrysler, Kraft Foods, San Francisco International Airport, SBC Communications, and United Parcel Service (UPS) will alarm Canadian companies to pay more attention to viruses and other forms of malicious code.All of these corporations suffered from computer crashes, downtime and repeated reboots because of the worm attacks. Business owners had been diverting their focus to spam in the last 12 months, neglecting the impact of viruses, worms, and spyware.
At Elco, our IT department continues to be at high alert. Our nationwide locations depend on our highly maintained servers at the Markham, Ont. head office. Our servers are set up with high security against spam, virus, worms, spyware and any malicious code. No business can afford downtime of seconds or minutes, not to mention hours.
The recent worm attack also brings more business opportunity in our industry. Business-owners regardless of size and individual users are more concerned about virus, spyware and security. It’s a good up-sell opportunity for system builders. They can offer customers anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and secure content management for individual users and enterprise level. It is an edge for the system builder to compete with its biggest competitor, Dell, which has driven the prices down to an all-time low. While Dell continues to recruit service partners, it clearly indicates that the channel is closer to the customers. The channel has the advantage to meet clients face-to-face instead of through the phone line.