· The MyDoom virus has, over the last few weeks, proven to be one of the fastest-spreading and most difficult to get rid of - and it may not be over yet. Off-site data back-up specialist Datafort is warning everyone that it can come back if you restore a file from a back-up and the file is infected.

The company is recommending that people with networks should hold their data centrally and keep it virus checked. This way, if a virus gets into a locally held copy, then it can be restored to a slightly older but "clean" version at will.

· Also on the virus front, networking service specialist Novell has published research suggesting the main reason viruses continue to spread is a lack of user knowledge.

In a report titled Putting UK Business at Risk, the company found that 58% of employees regularly forwarded spam (junk e-mail) without thinking, over a third were too busy to notice infected e-mails and over a third validated their companies' e-mail addresses by replying to junk mail.

Novell has published guidelines including not replying to junk mail, not opening unexpected attachments and above all, training staff in what they need to know so as not to crucify your business electronically.

· Still on security, specialist Watchguard has found a new way of making upgrades simple while locking customers in to buying from them.

The company's Firebox X product set, which can contain a firewall, anti-virus protection and content filtering among other things, are effectively part of the existing product range (although they're available separately) - customers wanting to upgrade to the new versions with extra functions will simply have to buy a software key, enter the numbers and their products will upgrade by themselves.

· Based in London? Well, the London Development Agency isn't satisfied with you. It seems that only 25% of London-based companies brought out new products in 2003, so it's set up an online portal, Knowledge2Innovate, which you can find at London-innovation.org.uk.

The portal aims to keep businesses in touch with information they will need, find other members with similar needs, join online communities, find research organisations in their area and find science parks and similar resources where they might be useful.

Meanwhile, businesses that wish to do more can visit i10.org.uk, which is a collaboration of 10 universities wanting to make their expertise and guidance on innovation available free of charge.

· Selling online? Then you might be interested to know that online catalogue specialist Actinic will now support payments from the Nochex system in version 6.14 of all of its products.

Nochex works by taking the debit card number of the account holder so there is next to no possibility of a charge back or similar mishap, and since it's debit rather than credit, the money is available as soon as it has hit your account. The Nochex facility is in addition to the other payment options within the Actinic range, all of which remain in place.

· Just when you thought it was safe to assume you knew about all the tape, disk and other back-up and storage media around, Iomega has started testing another.

Called RRD, it's in the hands of OEMs - people who will put it into their systems - at the moment. The company's partners in making the system available include TDK, Texas Instruments and ExcelStor.

Iomega's track record in the past has been impressive in establishing new storage technologies. Its Zip drive was commonplace before the writeable CD took its place in many contexts, and the new standard can take 35 gigabytes (70 when compressed) so should give writeable DVD a run for its market share and money.

· The problem with offering a support desk, if such a thing suits your business, is that people will insist on calling out of hours. This is why ATM Technology Management has released Support Sentinel, a package based on voice control and call routing that enables support staff to have calls forwarded to wherever they are without the customer needing to know.

It costs £30,000 and the company believes it will replace an outsourced call-handling service. It records a customer message digitally and forwards it once the customer hangs up, so if someone is indisposed, they don't have to respond to the call immediately.

You can program it to "know" how important a call actually is. It should handle hundreds of incoming and outgoing calls per month. The catch is that it's designed to work alongside the same company's remote service application.