We should understand that viruses infect outside machines only with the assistance of a computer user, which can be like clicking a file that comes attached with an email from an unknown person, plugging a USB without scanning, opening unsafe URLs, etc. For such reasons, we as system administrators have to remove the administrator permissions of users in their computers.
Some of the most common don’ts for letting malware enter into a system are as follows −
- Do not open any email attachments coming from unknown people or even from known people that contain suspicious text.
- Do not accept any invitation from unknown people in social media.
- Do not open any URL sent by unknown people or known people that are in any weird form.
Some other important pointers for keeping your system updated are as follows −
- Keep updating the operating system at regular intervals.
- Install and update the antivirus software.
Any removable storage that is taken from third parties should be scanned with antivirus software that are updated. Also, keep in mind to check the following aspects as well.
- Check if your monitor is using a screen saver.
- Check if the computer firewall is on.
- Check if you are doing backups regularly.
- Check if there are shares that are not useful.
- Check if your account have full rights or restricted.
- Update other third party software.
Managing Malware Risks
Managing malware risks is mainly for those companies, who do not comply for single computer users. To manage the risk that comes from malwares, there some key factors that accept the technologies that are being used, there is a human factor too. Risk management has to do with the analysis that identifies malware risks and prioritizes them according to the impact that they can have on business processes.
To reduce malware risks in a midsize business environment, we should consider the following points −
- Common information system assets
- Common threats
- Vulnerabilities
- User education
- Balancing risk management and business needs
In the next chapter, we will learn some important malware removal tools.
Malware Removal – Tools
In the previous chapters, we have discussed what malwares are, how they function and how to clean them. However, in this chapter, we will see the other side of automated protection, which are classified as anti-malwares or antivirus. The usage of this piece of software is very important these days because as we saw in the earlier chapters, the number of malwares are increasing exponentially as a result, it is impossible to detect them.
Each anti-malwares producer have their own technologies and techniques on how to detect the malwares, but it is worth mentioning that the they are very fast to detect because they take updates almost every day with the new malware detections.
Some of the most globally renowned and effective anti-malware or antiviruses are mentioned below −
- McAfee Stinger
- HijackThis
- Malwarebytes
- Kaspersky Endpoint Security 10
- Panda Free Anti-virus
- Spybot Search & Destroy
- Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+
- AVG Antivirus 2016
- SUPERAntiSpyware
- Microsoft Security Essentials