Malware Protection Strategy for SME

Threats are changing the IT environment for several years and still have major impact on IT security systems with regards to Malware Protection Strategy for SME (Small and Medium Enterprise). These threats steal the information from the computer without our knowledge and use them for criminal purposes to earn more money. Malware practices invade the entire system within minutes. In order to prevent such malware practice new malware protection strategies came into existence and businesses need to align their security procedures with the most up to date malware protection strategy .

In certain cases antivirus fails to detect certain threats that infect computer systems. Cyber criminals know each loophole to infect our systems within minutes. In a recent study carry out by the OECD at least one infected Web page is found  every five seconds. Over ninety percent of these pages are corrupted, therefore need restoring, however their owners are not aware of this fact. This occurs when a website has been compromised, which in turn infects a user or client’s machine, this website will carry on infecting visitors’ machines  without their knowledge, until this threat is detected and then removed. This is done by downloading  a malicious code   or Trojan which are very complicated computer codes.

What are Malware Protection Strategies to use?

Malware protection strategy is to reduce threats  and combat these malicious codes on IT systems environment by not only establishing the security policies but also implementing measures that defend your IT  infrastructure. With the help of this malware protection strategy many organisations have become aware of the need to control all their network and systems  points and to protect their data from the outside world. According to the old saying that ‘prevention is better than cure’ the threats must be detected and then removed. The system must provide proper protection by using a good and effective malware protection strategy.

Banning of unencrypted laptops and USBs from being taken out of the office should help your malware protection strategy, equally the use of personal laptop in the office should not be allowed. There are  different steps taken to protect the network from attackers, however these steps do not protect your entire IT infrastructure 100% . To reduce all of these attacks, malware protection strategies must be implemented ad adapted to the individual  company security needs. Maintaining traditional anti-virus protection is part of malware protection strategy but this is just a starting point because  the current level of IT security threat demands more than an anti-virus protection, unfortunately most companies rely solely on antivirus to protect their data.

Antivirus will only protect our system  to a certain point  even when properly configured because Trojan and Spyware have different signature that sometimes can not be detected by an antivirus software. Manageability and automation is a  key to the success of a good malaware protection strategy. Whenever a new computer enters a network, anti-virus software should be installed immediately and automatically before going live on the specific network. There are 20 basic strategies that can be used for malware defense for any business and they can be found at SANS, following these malware defense strategies  will reduce the level of threat to your company by 95%.

Part of the malware protection strategy is to act proactively to protect the network. Security vendors have comprehensive tools that help protect the physical and wireless LAN, some of them includes tools that defend your network against viruses, Cisco is a good example of such a vendor with their ASA product line. These family of products defend traditional DDOS security attacks, detect and thwart  intrusions, protect against spyware and viruses, using a few commands. However, it is impossible to remove the threat completely in system that is exposed externally, unfortunately this is a reality of IT Security nothing is perfect. For example, in recent wave of hacking , secure websites have been compromised despite the fact that they are hosted on a secure networks.

It is common  currency for  hijacked computers  to send an email to a user, includes only the line of the subject and the link on a website for another user to click in and they will in turn be infected.When the user clicks this illegal site, Trojan is downloading onto their computer in which the computer sends the data to the hijacker. The hacker also uses the new computer that is hacked in order to send more spam. To prevent this run-time protections have given which examines the behavior of the files. By using preventive protection can control malware attacks.

Network access control is also part of  malware protection strategy. This is a key weapon to ensure your business productivity and security. It manages the network access and reduces unauthorized  network access and system access. All small businesses owners must have security policies to protect against threats especially those that connect to the network. You can also use software that limit Network access to all the computers installed on your networks.

Operating systems must be up to date, this is the weakest point of malware protection strategy.  Application control is another malware protection strategy which is not correctly implemented properly by many business. For an effective Malware Protection Strategy contact us today on +441733 808404 for consultation.