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Tom’s Tech Tips

Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Patch the Patches on Your Legal Nurse Consulting Business’s Computer

The Internet has brought an age of convenience for Certified Legal Nurse Consultants. It gives you the ability to market and research that is unparalleled in history. With that opportunity comes some danger and today, one of the safest forms of communicating with attorney-clients has been turned against us. Documents created in the super-hand portable document format (PDF) used to be the safest form of sharing documents. Everyone could open them, read them safely and we’d all see the document exactly as its creator intended. Life with PDFs was good.

That was until someone broke the code and learned how to create a malware package that can be delivered and installed on your computer simply by opening a “poisoned” PDF document. These miscreants took advantage of loopholes in Adobe’s® Acrobat® and Adobe Reader software. To avoid these flaws tech-savvy Certified Legal Nurse Consultants turned to alternate PDF readers (like Foxit™) and so the miscreants turned their attention to those readers also.

But do not be afraid my CLNC® amigos. Luckily on the side of the angels (that’s most of us), there are the fine people who write antivirus programs, antispyware programs and who create fixes for our web browsers and other software to keep us safe. I know that nobody likes patches, whether they’re full of pumpkins, on your favorite denim jacket or even for your operating system (OS). We do need, though, to apply those patches and keep our software up-to-date.

To keep your Adobe software from running malware embedded in a PDF document, open Adobe Reader, go to Edit, then Preferences, then scroll down to Trust Manager and uncheck the box next to “Allow opening of non-PDF file attachments with external applications.” This will provide a basic layer of protection. Even better, if you’re using any version of the free Adobe Reader less than 9 then you should upgrade to Adobe Reader 9.4.0 or higher. If you’re not using the free Reader, IT’S TIME TO UPGRADE. If you’re using a full version of Adobe Acrobat 9 you should upgrade to 9.4.0 or higher. Here is a link to the free Reader. Remember to uninstall your earlier version before installing the new version.

I’ve also blogged before about the dangers of relying on the so-called “automatic updates” features of some software. Sometimes they don’t work and you end up running unpatched or vulnerable software – this includes your web browsers, all your Microsoft programs (including your OS) and especially Adobe products. Nobody knows when the next weakness will be discovered and exploited so keep your patches up to date.

One last tech tip, get a free copy of SUPERAntiSpyware for every computer in your home and legal nurse consulting business and run it once a week (keep it updated too). It’s not guaranteed to catch all malware but it’s a terrific program. I actually run it every other week, alternating it with running a free copy of Spybot® Search & Destroy. It’s another terrific free resource and between the two, I feel pretty safe knowing one of them has my back, just like I’ve got yours.

Keep on techin’ – bringing safety back,

Tom

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*The opinions and statements made by Vickie Milazzo, the founder of Medical-Legal Consulting Institute, Inc. are based on her experiences and expertise, should not be applied beyond the specific context provided, and do not guaranty or project actual results. Vickie Milazzo is no longer involved in the operations or management of the business, but is involved as an independent education consultant.

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