Part 2: Malware Detection, Protection & Removal with Antivirus & Security Software
With your users adopting this safer, preventative behavior, the chances of being attacked by malware are slimmer, but not impossible. To minimize the volume of threats that reach your clients’ network, strengthen your remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution with a solid firewall, anti-malware and antivirus software. Be sure to maintain regular management of both, checking that they’re active and up-to-date.
Anti-Virus (AV) Solutions
AV software is your end-to-end malware security defense. When activated, it monitors your clients’ networks for incoming threats. Common security suites often include spam filtering in email and a firewall, which blocks suspicious websites and applications from running. One common issue with threat intelligence, however, is that victims can be targeted without knowing when their system has been compromised. With AV solutions, you can configure a scan to run regularly and automatically to search files for known viruses and evidence of suspicious activity which could signify an infected system. While this latter function often reports false positives, it also helps detect new viruses or ones that may have been sneakily encrypted. Lastly, an AV solution takes care of malware removal. As explained by AntivirusWorld, once a corrupted file is flagged, the software “can then either delete the file, quarantine it so that the file is inaccessible to other programs and its virus is unable to spread, or attempt to repair the file by removing the virus itself from the file.”
What should you look for in a business-grade AV solution, such as Webroot? Your antivirus software should:
- detect and protect clients from both major threats like CryptoLocker and minor vulnerabilities which could escalate later
- not consume too much network bandwidth or PC disk capacity
- not slow down processing speed
- provide a hassle-free end user experience
Anti-Malware Solutions
Anti-malware is usually packaged into antivirus offerings, but solutions like Malwarebytes are strong compliments to AV software. Malwarebytes claims the following in their support forum:
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is not meant to be a replacement for antivirus software. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware is a complementary but essential program which detects and removes zero-day malware and “Malware in the Wild”.
This includes malicious programs and files, such as virus droppers, worms, trojans, rootkits, dialers, spyware, and rogue applications that many antivirus programs do not detect or cannot fully remove. That being said, there are many infections that Malwarebytes Anti-Malware does not detect or remove which any antivirus software will, such as file infectors.
Either way, look for a Managed IT company like Boost IT that integrates conflict-free with malware protection software providers such as these.
Want to get your network security and remediation automated and running smoothly?