How viruses spread Infections spread from machine to machine, and from organisation to organisation, in a number of ways. Booting a PC from an infected medium. Executing an infected program. Opening an infected file. Prevention includes creating user awareness, implementing hygiene rules, using disk authorisation software, or providing isolated 'quarantine' PCs.
Containment involves identifying and isolating the infected items.
Recovery involves disinfecting or removing infected items, and recovering or replacing corrupted data.