Many of you will know Anti-Virus as a program that scans your hard drive for nasties, hopefully removes them and then occasionally pops up asking for money. This has been the typical experience for many users for decades with malicious programs playing cat and mouse with anti-virus in a battle of developers taking place inside your PC. Similar to their biological counterparts the computer virus has changed and updated in order to survive, and the corresponding medicine has developed accordingly.
Nowadays this would be considered a basic threat, with a basic solution. Still suitable for home users, but wholly inadequate for businesses and organisations.
With so many new attack vectors in modern systems it’s important to provide protection at every stage. A typical E-Defence might include end-point software running on local machines, a dedicated network device, email gateways and a form of central management – usually a web portal.
Since there is no absolute protection (without unplugging) the goal is to stop problems before they develop with dedicated firewalls, web filtering and content control, and to try to catch suspicious and malicious emails before they are delivered or sent. If by chance this fails, the endpoint software will try to isolate threats by quarantine of the file. Remote monitoring can act to isolate the computer from the network to reduce damage and spread.
The protection doesn’t end there – if all lines of defence have been bypassed somehow then you have to rely on data backups. If the data is critical or sensitive then it is wise to have several stages of backed up data, segregated and stored off-site. This way it should be possible to restore safe and clean data in the event your business information is compromised, along with appropriate policy and procedure this all combines into what is known as ATP or Advanced Threat Protection.
Overall it seems clear that leaving any weakness or openings in your IT systems is no different to leaving a building unlocked with the door open, it is simply a matter of time before somebody takes advantage. Think about your own systems, are they properly protected? Is your data safe? What else could you be doing to mitigate potential damage? After all is said and done, no amount of money can replace lost data.
Ben
Ben is a client support engineer who has decades of computing experience and a bachelor’s degree in computing. With a speciality in troubleshooting and repair, he works with the team to keep things running smoothly and keep our clients happy, contributing towards the company’s values: Responsiveness, Reliability and Reassurance, delivering Technology Without Tears.
Want a chat with Ben? Let me know I can arrange this for you – kamila@octagontech.com or 01522 797520.
Kamila
