The 5 Steps IT Specialists Must Take In Order to Prevent Malware Attacks

Malware is evolving constantly, the patterns of attack may be diversifying but the threats they pose to your company still carry the same serious damage that they always have. It’s vital then that you implement these 5 protocols that ensure you will be able to detect, prevent, and ultimately stop malware in its tracks!

1. Endpoint Protection -

You want protection from every stage of an attack, rather than being caught short by an unwanted intruder. Being alerted based on known file hashes as they are detected is fine, but you really want to stay aware at all times. With Next-Gen Endpoint Security it provides more than an alert of an attack, it’s constant supervision. If there is unusual activity from software or processes on your machine, Endpoint Security will alert you to it right away. You’re always one step ahead of any potential threats because of Next-Gen’s excellent anomaly detection.

2. Intrusion Detection & Intrusion Prevention -

You’re dealing with a copious amount of network traffic day in, day out. You need to remain vigilant to ensure that you’re not letting attackers slip through your security setup. So your next step is adding IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems) and IPS (Intrusion Prevention Systems) to your security setup. IDS and IPS act as a double-team, with IDS detecting the malicious packet, and IPS preventing it from laying waste to your systems.

3. Decrypt your traffic -

The best attacks are never telegraphed, clearly, that rule doesn’t change when it comes to Malware. Potential attackers aren’t going to come at you head-on, they know you’re bombarded by traffic and they will use that to sneak their way into your systems and wreak havoc. So your next step is to add SSL decryption to your arsenal. With SSL decryption you don’t just seek out malicious entities inside your traffic- you analyze the ENTIRETY of your traffic. Re-routing the offenders in question to inspection tools on your system which identify attackers going after your applications, and even outbound attacks that could be going after your customers on the internet.

4. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) -

With all the data collected on our networks from endpoint logs, application files, website logs, or messaging logs it’s absolutely necessary to make understanding these sources as easy as possible. That’s why your next move is to employ SIEM to centrally collect and correlate all of the log files in one location. By implementing a solution such as this you are able to pinpoint an intrusion and identify where that intrusion came from on your network. The SIEM will write parsers making it simple to search for results from endpoint to firewall, letting you keep track of what occurred from start to finish in your digital domain.

5. AI To Process The Data -

As useful as SIEM is, it will collect an extraordinary amount of data, not just from the endpoint and the network but from the applications running on your system. So the final piece to this puzzle is incorporating AI into your process. You will need AI or some type of machine learning to help make sense of the data captured along the way ultimately helping with anomaly detection.

Remember malware doesn’t want to be found! By implementing these 5 recommendations you will have the stack in place to help identify and remove malware before it wreaks havoc; having just one of the aforementioned security measures just isn’t enough. As the old saying goes ‘a chain is only as good as its weakest link’, and with all of these measures carried out any potential attacker is going to fail when trying to find a chink in your defense.

Security Monitoring: Ensure You Have The Right Technology and Processes in Place to Identify Anomalies and Prevent Malware

With the implementations mentioned above, your company will have the visibility needed to help identify and stop malicious attacks. If it’s not possible to implement what we mentioned, or perhaps your company may have one of the recommendations in place but not the others, it might be time you thought about a managed service provider to help with your security monitoring.

For some smaller companies, retaining a proficient in-house IT team can be difficult due to these security experts being in high demand, on top of the oftentimes limited financial resources of the business in question.
That’s why more and more companies are outsourcing their security needs to managed service providers. This way they can receive 24/7 cyber protection and support. TBConsulting’s Cybersecurity Solutions provide total system support to help companies stay ahead of potential attackers and weaknesses in their security.

A monitoring solution greatly reduces the chance of a cyber attack, while keeping your company’s financial assets secure. Too many cybersecurity setups are attacked and all too many times, the breach is not seen until it’s too late. Having good visibility over your own vulnerabilities limits the potential for your company to fall victim to a debilitating cyber-attack.

Interested in learning more about monitoring solutions or how to prevent breaches? Browse TBConsulting’s cybersecurity offerings and see how we can protect your valuable data, and more importantly, your business.