A Survey on The Effect of Computer Virus Attacks and Its Preventive Measures Among Computer Users

Computer use is becoming part of people’s lives, however, there have been considerable threats of computer virus attacks in the recent past. Viruses have had adverse effects on computer resources ranging from loss of data, destruction of computer, stealing of confidential information, damage to credibility and in some cases, mild effects such as slowdown computer performance or message pop-ups appear on the screen. This research studied the effect of computer virus attacks, identify the most common types of computer virus infections, and provide guidelines on how individuals can protect their computers from virus attacks. The research applied the use of cross-sectional survey method using survey questionnaires of independent variables of 246 personal computer users which include professionals, students of tertiary institutions and computer users using convenient sampling method. The findings of the study revealed that a high percentage (about 65.04%) claimed that antivirus has high impact on computer virus attacks. The findings also revealed that symptoms of all types and ways of computer virus infection are prevalent. However, the findings further revealed that symptoms of memory resident virus, boot sector virus and worm are relatively common (about 32.11%) than other types of viruses. The findings revealed that the majority (about 71.95%) indicates installing license and updating antivirus software is the best preventive measures to safeguard their computer resources from virus attacks. Finally, based on the study's findings, several recommendations are proposed to enhance computer virus protection and safeguard computer resources. These include adopting robust antivirus software, maintaining regular software updates, implementing automatic virus scans, and practicing safe browsing habits.