Firewalls and worms

Found your article on AIM worms helpful and informative. Thanks! Since I'm not very technical, however, I didn't understand your advice, "AIM users are advised...to make sure they have a firewall in place and get the latest security updates for when a fix is available." We do have a firewall, but have never updated its software, thinking that worms/viruses were better addressed by our anti-virus software. We have Linksys and Motorola firewalls. How would we update these devises, and how often do you recommend we do so? Thanks!
Lorrie L.

Some of the activity that worms/viruses can cause may not be caught by anti-virus software. Having a firewall that is up to date is just as important as having the latest scanning engine and anti-virus signatures for your anti-virus software. A firewall and anti-virus software are just two of the tools that you can use to fight worms/viruses and lessen the chance that you will receive damage from them.

Updating the firmware on your firewalls is pretty easy. For Linksys products, go here and select the product for which you need firmware updates. After downloading the file, unzip the file if it has a .zip extension and put the file either in a directory or on the root of the drive of the workstation you're using. You should now have a file with a .bin extension. Go into the Web browser interface for the Linksys router and usually under the About tab (depending on the product and version of firmware you have), you should see an option for updating the firmware. Follow the instructions for finding the .bin file on your workstation and begin the update process.

For your Motorola product, you should be able to find the latest firmware update here. In this case, you will probably be downloading an .exe file. Follow the instructions on the Motorola Web site or the steps that should appear when you run the .exe file you downloaded from Motorola's site.

As for how often to do this, that is a decision you will need to make. I would recommend checking the Web sites for updates at least once a month, the more often the better. While most vendors may not release more than one update every month or so, the more often you check and apply the update, the sooner you will be protected from what the firmware update was written to address.