4 steps to prevent malware damaging your business

How software can detect ransomware

One of the most widely experienced forms of malware is ransomware. 37% of organisations surveyed were hit by a ransomware attack in 2021. Although this figure is actually lower than the year before, the costs of rectifying the impact of an attack have increased significantly to an average of $1.85 million.

A typical ransomware program, once on your system, will encrypt data on a computer and hold it ransom until you pay or find another way of getting them back. Different forms of ransomware will operate differently and such is the sophistication of some attacks these days that they will adapt to avoid detection.

If a previous attack was characterised by encrypting files really quickly, a subsequent attack may encrypt the data at a snail’s pace, attempting to go unnoticed until it’s too late.

The good news is the best anti-malware software such as the Sophos Intercept X will notice this happening based on behaviour it has seen in the past. It can also keep a cache of files and data to go back to if it detects a program running. The threat will be isolated, and the system can be rolled back to where it was before the attack.

2. Think about access

Most computer viruses and malware work by attaching to a vulnerable unit and spreading from there to anything in proximity. Much like a human virus.

The most vulnerable points in a business are their endpoints. These are the points of a local network that touch the outside world. In many cases, this is an employee’s computer. You have less control of this and the person using it, so it is more vulnerable.

Most people in your organisation are connected to the same network so they all provide a way in for cyber-attacks. The key to making them less vulnerable is ensuring that they don’t have access to everything on the network.

In fact, we’d bet there’s probably a lot of data they don’t need access to. Giving employees different levels of access depending on their requirements is a great way of making your overall network more secure.

This isn’t necessarily going to stop malware from getting to one of your employee’s computers, but it could limit the spread of that attack, minimising the overall impact to your business.

It’s easy to set up different permissions for individual users on most software. You can also use VPNs and authentication as a way of maintaining security, even if staff aren’t in the office.

3. Make sure your firewall is up to the task

Everyone knows what a firewall is and most home users will have one. At enterprise level the need is greater.

With businesses being a lucrative target for cyber criminals, an efficient and powerful defence system is needed. This is going to be more effective than the simple but adequate barrier provided by popular consumer software. It will usually take the form of hardware that could be bigger or smaller depending on the number of PC’s that need protecting.

Rather than just looking at what you can see on screen and taking things at face value, you need something that will stop you from accessing websites with malicious links or heading down a path which might look safe but which actually contains threats to your security.

An effective firewall should prevent anyone from remotely logging into your network without permission, accessing backdoor vulnerabilities in your system, launching successful denial of service attacks and more.

This is an absolute must for any business, but even with this there is still one vulnerability that’s a lot harder to secure. You.

4. Training is your friend

Of course, we’re sure you’re a responsible and clued-up employee who would never click on a suspicious link. But that’s not going to be the case with everyone. Regular training is important to make sure employees are alert to the danger of cybercrime.

Most malware is distributed by email and the amount of email scams has increased since Covid. Email phishing attacks accounted for a whopping 90% of data breaches in 2021.

The reason for this relatively low-tech approach to cybercrime is that it involves a human.

Hacking a computer is hard and requires a significant number of resources (which some operations do have). It’s a lot easier to trick someone into clicking something they shouldn’t. And hackers are getting cleverer all the time.

Fake emails and texts can be made to look quite convincing and will often impersonate a trustworthy organisation such as the NHS, local government, Royal Mail, or something else.

Another common tactic is to pose as someone within your organisation. Hackers could obtain necessary info needed to impersonate someone’s boss and subsequently try and trick them. It happens with simple scams but it can also be used to initiate malware attacks.

Of course, one of the main things to do is look out for tell-tale signs. There will usually be some indication that something’s not quite right, whether it’s a dodgy email address, poor wording of the email or an unconvincing design. Even then, if this organisation or person is asking for money, it’s important to check to see whether it is a legitimate request. In most cases it won’t be.