There is an unexpected link that's been discovered between your computer's ability to ward off viruses, spyware and malware (VSM) and the reemergence of the cold war between Russia and the West. There was a time that lasted from the 1980's to the mid 1990's where having a virus was little more than an annoyance, but with the tidal wave of VSM since then it has become a crusade to keep the bad guys away from our businesses and our nation's defenses.

I think by now all of us in the technical field are aware of the potential devastating effects of VSM such as identity theft, data theft, hoards of spam sent from zombie computers, and more, but there is a new threat that should compel us even more to protect ourselves from the dangers of the internet.

Several months ago Russia invaded the country of Georgia, but they didn’t just use guns and bombs to hurt the Georgian people, they also used "Cyber Warfare".

For instance, the Georgian Ministry of Defense websites along with the Central Government websites have been defaced by posting pictures of Adolph Hitler buddying up with Georgian president Saakashvili.

The second attack the Russian hackers used was a DDOS attack. This stands for Distributed Denial of Service Attack, and it has been used successfully against all of the largest websites in the world at one time or another. A DDOS attack floods a website or entire network of the hacker's choosing but sending billions of data packets that contain nonsense. This overwhelms the routers and the servers causing everything to slow down to a crawl.

Now for the most shocking news of all: The DDOS attacks that brought down the internet for Georgia wasn't all directed out of Russia. Many of the DDOS packets sent there came from bot infected computers in America. Yes that’s right. From the country that's most adamant about protecting the freedom and security of Georgia.

Protecting your computer from hackers is not only the safe thing to do but the right thing to do. Make sure the computers you support are not part of the problem that causes people in less fortunate countries to be attacked and exploited even further. Microsoft and Cisco have created excellent products that check the health of a computer before letting it on the network. I’m sure we will see more of these types of protections in the future.

Robert McMillen is the President of All Tech 1, LLC, a Gold Certified VAR in Portland, OR. He also hosts the All Tech Radio show heard all over the world. You can visit them at http://alltech1.com or email Robert directly at [email protected].