Use these four tips to safeguard your business against Malware.

This year has witnessed two things, pandemic and an unprecedented spike in the number of malware attacks on newly remote employees. While companies were struggling to stay up and running with the remote work and pandemic, the attackers took advantage of that with phishing scams, hacks, and business email compromise campaigns. Cybercriminals typically target specific things like mail servers, desktops, and web application servers. They target important elements like mails and servers whose loss will cause damage to your operations. But attackers do not have all the advantage, there are many steps you can take to protect your company from malware attack. The first step is to identify your own weak-points.

1. Network and Anti-Virus monitoring

Businesses are more susceptible to attacks than ever before. The employees everywhere use mobile applications and devices to answer hundreds of emails per day and to advertise on social networks. All of these purposes come with unique security challenges. Mobile devices are also vulnerable to wi-fi-based middleman cyberattacks, where a third-party intercepts malicious sensitive information. Emails are still the most-used channel for successful malware delivery. And social networks are full of pretext attacks. Your business needs a verification point at these contact points irrespective of whether the information is entering, exiting, or moving within the network. Managed Network Monitoring analyses traffic, and keeps check on your files, and stops threats from emerging at the perimeter. Your MSP can layer an Anti-Virus solution to set some specific rules that govern information analysis and security while sharing files.

2. Backup and Disaster Recovery

In a security breach incident or a natural disaster, you have to make sure that your company data is safe and secure and the incident will not hamper your company’s productivity. This is achieved in several ways. You need work continuity at the data center level also known as geographic redundancy. To make your network better capable and positioned to absorb changes, you can spread your digital assets across multiple locations where it can tolerate the downtime or spikes in traffic. It is also advisable to have cloud-based backups from multiple providers.

3. Safe File Sharing and Syncing

The most detailed security measures are those related to the data itself. Tools associated with Enterprise Mobility + Security, or Datto's File Sync enables administrators to establish specific controls to handle, share, and store company data. Azure Information Protection (AIP) will appropriately classify data sensitivity, log and monitor changes, and adjust restrictions in the requested manner. Office 365’s Information Protection feature allows you to set Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies to monitor information across all your application.

4. Employee Training

Employee training holds utter importance because the uninformed staff makes your organization susceptible to malware attacks. Secondly, as a company operator, you need to have a clear understanding of how your employees interact with technology? How many applications do they use daily? Do they use shadow IT or unsanctioned tools? How often do they use personal devices to respond to work emails? Mobile devices are far more vulnerable to social attacks and phishing scams. A proper employee training program must be curated for mobile security.