Help: My Anti-Virus Didn’t Work!

I’ll be the first to admit it. Cybercrime has evolved and it’s more complicated than ever. Once upon a time, a firewall and an anti-virus solution were all you needed to protect your computer and it’s mountain of data. But as we all know, once upon a time doesn’t help us today. Here’s a message I received this week from one of our readers.

“We’ve been really disappointed with our anti-virus lately. We’ve suffered from two recent intrusions. Our anti-virus didn’t even catch these attacks, let alone stop them. IT spent hours troubleshooting and eventually had to reimage both machines. Staff couldn’t work while computers were being repaired and we lost valuable data. Can you help me?”

— Carlos H., Senior IT Manager

Ouch! Well the bad news is that this story is all too common. I hear it all the time. And here’s why. Anti-virus solutions use blacklisting technology to protect you from known threats. The concept is just like at stores that post pictures of thieves inside the store. They’re blacklisted. And some solutions even use behavior analysis and profiling – does that guy look or act suspicious?

As you can easily imagine, there are many threats that don’t look menacing, but are extremely dangerous. And this is the reason that anti-virus alone cannot provide enough protection from today’s threats. Cybercriminals are making malware smarter and more sophisticated. Let’s face it. They’re designed to sneak past your anti-virus.

Ok, so what advice did I give to Carlos? Well you can relax a little. There is something you can do. It’s called application control. IT Administrators simply select the trusted applications, programs, and files they want to run, and everything else is blocked. It’s like the VIP host at a fancy party. If you’re not on the guest list, you’re not allowed in. Period.

So the next time a nasty threat tries to knock on the door to your computer… guess what? It won’t be on the ‘guest list’ and so it will be stopped in its tracks. So Carlos and everyone else out there, if you add application control to your security infrastructure, you’ll enjoy better security, peace of mind, and say good-bye to troubleshooting infected machines.

So don’t be a sitting duck… and don’t wait until it’s too late… outsmart the hackers with better security.