Many aspects of our lives, previously set fair on a steady course of year-on-year improvement, took a completely unexpected backward jolt with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic; one of these, unfortunately, was computer security.
Maintaining security when working from home
In some countries, working from home has become the norm. In others, such a setup is difficult because of flaky internet connectivity. Either way, it’s important for business leaders to limit the risks that arise when employees work on their own at home, or in public places such as libraries or cafés.
Enforcing the use of company rather than personal devices is crucial, but even so, the possibility of theft or damage is high. Deep Freeze, Faronics’ core functionality, is a bulletproof solution to this tricky problem, as it ensures that every time a workstation is restarted, it does so in its original pristine state. Any changes made by a local user are wiped out; even if the device is lost or stolen, an administrator can clean it in a couple of clicks from the cloud. No work need ever be jeopardised by Deep Freeze, since employees can sync everything back to OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive.
Andy Tudor Nash, network manager at Haywood Engineering College, says: ‘Thanks to Faronics Deep Freeze, the college can be sure that all our netbooks remain free from spyware, malware, viruses, and system downtime. Having the security of knowing our 190 netbooks will always return to our original settings on log off means that my team does not need to check the netbooks on a daily basis.’
Ransomware
Payments by victims of ransomware increased in 2020 by 311%, to a total of almost $350 million. On top of the actual ransom payments can be added huge losses in terms of person hours dealing with a crisis, and devastation to lives and livelihoods when critical services are hit, such as hospitals or fuel supplies.
Just by ticking one box in their cloud consoles, Faronics customers have stopped worrying about these problems.
Many IT administrators go further, and block unknown .exe files, an extremely common vehicle for malware. By adhering strictly to a curated list of acceptable anti-executables, you can be certain that unsuspecting colleagues won’t fall prey to sophisticated scams. Our customisable push or email notifications for security events, along with an anti-executable dashboard, allow you complete oversight of exactly what is happening and where, for total peace of mind.
Our customer STC Group found that turning on anti-executable in their policy ‘has saved us many man-hours of work as we do not have to manually work on each PC. It keeps infections down to near zero.’
Rock-solid antivirus protection
Faronics customers who enable both Deep Freeze and Anti-Executable in their policies can be sure of total security, leaving them to focus on other strategic priorities. But for those of an anxious disposition, a third layer can be enabled to work seamlessly with the first two: our antivirus package, offered in partnership with Bitdefender, not only provides exceptional virus, spyware and rootkit detection, but also includes firewall protection for comprehensive, rock-solid security. We harness the most advanced technology to combat millions of threats and detect the most complicated malware without slowing down your devices.
Jeannin Automobiles are delighted with our antivirus protection: ‘Compared to our old product, Faronics Anti-Virus consumes less memory. Each key entry triggers an automatic scan and once the virus has been identified, the option to delete rather than leave in quarantine has proved much more secure.’
To find out more about how Faronics can make you safer than safe.
