While protection against malicious attacks (viruses, spam, phishing, etc.) both evolves and increases in strength, so too does the malicious activity that we are trying to prevent.
Recently, the number of viruses recorded in the wild topped the one million mark. The sheer amount of malware capable of affecting business is very daunting.
It is not fair to say that the larger the organisation the bigger the risk. Small to medium organisations (SMEs) should be just as cautious and pedantic about their protection systems as their larger counterparts.
There are many different kinds of viruses, spammers, adware, spyware, hackers and phishers out there hoping to hurt you or your business. The following are examples of the common cases of malicious attacks (or attackers) capable of attacking a company network.
Virus: The most widely and well-known threat to any IT system. A virus can have the most detrimental effects on any system such as complete loss of hard drive contents, loss of vital registry files or overall inaccessibility to one's system. This can leave SME systems crippled and rendered useless until the virus has been eliminated.
Spyware: This is software that secretly gathers information about a user while they navigates the Internet. This information is normally used for advertising purposes, but can also gather information about e-mail addresses and even passwords and / or credit card numbers.
Phishing: A scam, usually through email, where the attacker attempts to trick the user into giving away valuable information such as credit card numbers or bank account details, giving the "phishers" access to money or other valuable entities.
Trojan Horse: Possibly one of the most feared threats known today, a Trojan Horse is a program that disguises itself as another program. A Trojan horse is almost impossible to eliminate and usually results in the necessity of formatting a system in order to rid the system of the Trojan Horse, along with all of the contents of the hard drive.
Protecting yourself
Security in the SME should be seen as an investment that will eventually pay for itself.
Dov Dayan, COO of PineApp South Africa
There are many ways for SMEs to protect themselves from malicious attacks and threats. Today, we have moved away from the simple anti-virus software programs of the past to stand-alone applications that can actively protect and prevent our systems from being attacked.
To date there are hundreds of different anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-phishing, etc. programs that can repair the damage done on our systems or better yet, prevent them from becoming infected in the first place.
While anti-virus protection does help prevent viruses and other threats, the consistency and efficiency of stand-alone applications has proven to be greater than that of a single anti-virus program. This is largely due to the fact that a stand-alone applications can provide complete protection against all kinds of threats.
Benefits for SMEs
Besides the obvious benefits of eliminating and preventing malicious programs and files harming the corporate network, there are other benefits that IT security offers the SME.
These include:
* Allowing for peace of mind amongst IT professionals and allowing them to focus on their core competencies - the information system.
* Keeping the flow within the SME's internal system by eliminating the proverbial hiccup of having to format or reboot systems and having to deal with major informationloss.
* Improving the overall productivity of the SME staff as it enables workers and management alike to keep working efficiently without having to stall or stop due to a virus, spam, mail bombing or constant spyware.
* Helping to prevent identity theft and phishing which can result in financial loss.
Security in the SME should be seen as an investment that will eventually pay for itself, by preventing time, financial and productivity losses.
* Dov Dayan is COO at PineApp South Africa.
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