With an ever changing threat level, Anti-Virus alone may not always provide adequate protection. Examples are Cryptolocker and more recently CryptoWall. These recent infections not only cause considerable business disruption, but also threaten your data and in some cases, cost you money; this is called Ransomware.
In addition to Anti-Virus, there are a number of other measures that can provide an extra layer of security:
- Managed Mail Filtering – prevent threats from reaching the local network
- Managed Web Filtering – prevents access to harmful content from local system threats
- Hardware Security Appliances – detect and prevent infection from the network edge
- Network Domain Policy – prevents file execution
- Additional Anti-Malware detection software
It is advisable to keep your user base up-to-date with what to look for to ensure infections are kept off your systems and network – the last line of defence is the user.
What to look for:
- Is the e-mail expected?
- Is the ‘from’ address valid?
- Is the subject matter or e-mail body relevant?
- Does the e-mail have a professional look and feel?
- Check spelling and grammar
- Is there an attachment?
- if yes and you believe it is safe, ALWAYS save the file to the desktop and scan with the Anti Virus tool before opening. If it is a virus, use Shift+Del to permanently remove the file from the desktop.
- does the attachment have a double file extension such as .pdf.exeKnown e-mail threats include e-mails from courier/freight firms, e-mails with CVs attached, any e-mail that has a double file extension (eg .pdf.exe) and any e-mail with a .zip attachment.
