IT experts disconnected GMP from the Police National Computer (PNC) after finding the conficker virus on Friday. It means officers have been asking neighbouring forces to carry out national checks on names and vehicles.

The conficker virus, a malicious worm, is believed to have infected up to 15 million computers around the world. It was identified in the GMP system on Friday and quickly spread through the force, leading to the decision to cut off access to the PNC.

Assistant Chief Constable Dave Thompson said the virus was not destructive and no data had been lost.

“A team of experts is now working on removing the virus, and will not reconnect until we are sure there is no further threat,” he said. “We have systems in place to ensure this does not affect our service to the communities of Greater Manchester. “At this stage it is not clear where the virus has come from but we are investigating how this has happened and will be taking steps to prevent this from happening again.”

Ian Jackson, Managing Director at Imerja commented on the story on North West Tonight regional news, stating: “If an organisation implements a very robust security policy that has many layers of protection for its network, and it polices and enforces it with rigor, and compliments that with awareness for its users then a lot of this can be avoidable.”

Conficker initially worked by exploiting a vulnerability in the Windows Server service, which Microsoft combated with a security update. However, the virus can spread via portable devices such as memory sticks.

Email anti-spam and virus scanning from Imerja – peace of mind for a lot less than you think…

Email is critical to any business in today’s competitive markets – in many cases it forms the backbone of an organisation’s day-to-day activities, and its use will only continue to grow. According to the latest research† the worldwide email market will grow from 1.4 billion mailboxes in 2006 to 2.5 billion mailboxes in 2010.

Uncontrolled email presents a threat to any business – from the introduction of a destructive virus damaging your internal network (not to mention your standing with customers and business partners if you pass it on), down to the time individual employees spend managing spam and deleting it from their inboxes – it all presents a potential high cost to the business in terms of resource, productivity and reputation.

Imerjamail provides you, your co-workers, business partners and your customers with confidence that emails you send and receive are clean and secure. For more details on Imerjamail and to sign up for a free 30 day trial please contact us or visit the service website: www.imerjamail.com.

A proven method of catching spam today may not work tomorrow, and it would be unrealistic to guarantee catching all spam email all of the time, or indeed that non-spam emails may not be intercepted on rare occasions.

Imerjamail consistently captures over 98% of all spam helping to increase your productivity, save on wasted resource and cost, and protect your reputation.

The underlying technology behind Imerjamail incorporates both commercially available and Open Source applications – however, the real benefit is that we keep it up to date and move all of the processing outside of your corporate network – reducing both bandwidth and resource costs.

The service constantly evolves and adapts to identify and block the latest threats by applying a point-scoring system to each email scanned. It provides flexible criteria against which you have full control to set thresholds to allow, block or quarantine messages.

To find out more contact us today, or email us at: imerjamail@imerja.com

What does it cost?

Imerjamail is a low cost business class service with prices starting from as little as £11.95 per mailbox per year – click here for more details