Part Four: Managed Antivirus

By: Sam Geary, Marketing Executive

We’re on number four of our quintet of blog articles. This post is going to be focusing on ‘antivirus’ and discussing why investing in a such a solution can benefit your business and your data.

Here’s a quick recap of what’s been covered so far:

Patch Management (read the blog here)
Cyber Essentials (read it here)
Backup and Disaster Recovery (Click here to read)

As a company, we do try our best to make the subject of ‘data protection’ as exciting as possible, but as you can imagine – that’s quite a difficult job. Securing company data is something you’ll need to do in order to work towards GDPR compliance and you should already have some solid measures in place.

With GDPR now in full force – you’ve probably been swamped with ‘opt in’ e-mails and consent requests from companies you may have forgotten you even had dealings with! Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

A lot of companies have fallen into a panic at the news of the new legislation. The truth of the matter is, these extreme lengths can be somewhat unnecessary, especially if you’re an honest company with authentic dealings.

Protecting data isn’t hard. The endless articles and information advising you to take absurd precautions to avoid a hefty fine all in the name of GDPR can be misleading (especially for SMEs).

We try our very best to cut out the cryptic nonsense when it comes to the data regulation, so, let’s get straight to it and find out how anti-virus plays a key role in the protection of your data.

What is antivirus?

The definition of antivirus varies but it’s defined something like this:

‘A program designed to prevent, detect and remove malware infections on individual computing devices, networks and IT systems’.

Most of us have suffered from computer threats in the past, so we all know how important it is to install antivirus protection on our computers and keep the software up to date.

But, how does this software coincide with the GDPR?

One of the most important ways to defend devices within your business is by installing and monitoring antivirus software.

Article 32 of the GDPR requires ‘businesses to ensure ongoing confidentiality, integrity, availability and resilience of processing systems and services’.

What if your infrastructure becomes infected with ransomware?

Ransomware affects nearly 50% of all UK businesses and with this number increasing, it’s important for organisations to ensure they don’t become another victim.

Put simply, under the GDPR, businesses are required to put certain measures in place to protect data and one of these measures iis antivirus.

Although antivirus can help defend against a variety of threats, that alone isn’t going to keep your infrastructure safe and more specifically your data. To ensure your data is kept safe, secure and accessible you’ll need to have a variety of measures in place.

It’s vital to have reliable protection to prevent unwanted cyber-attacks and our Managed Antivirus service does just that…

The number of SMEs being affected by malware has increased drastically over the past few years and where large organisations use to be the main type of businesses being affected- SMEs are now taking over.

When considering an antivirus solution, it’s fundamental that you’re always protected when your computer is on.

Your business could be faced with threats of different forms. Some are fairly ‘low end’ and relatively harmless, causing only slight disruption, whereas some are more sophisticated meaning your business could experience severe downtime. These threats include:

Worms
Viruses
Ransomware
Spyware
Hackers

A great antivirus solution offers all round protection. Users should ensure they know exactly what they want from their antivirus before committing to the solution.

Educate your employees

A certain amount of employee education is necessary to give your business the utmost protection. Most online threats are spread via employee-led activity such as opening infected e-mails, visiting infected websites and sharing infected files. Without protection, your business is left vulnerable and will most probably be caught out by at least one of the threats mentioned above.

Luckily, there are a range of benefits of using our managed antivirus solution:

– Centralised management

– Scheduled scanning

– Reduced downtime

– Behavioural scanning

– Remote management

– Deployment and monitoring

– Protection against new and existing threats

By fully outsourcing your antivirus to us, you’re placing the responsibility into the hands of professionals. We ease the burden of an in-house IT team, by offering a professionally managed secure solution that allows your business to focus on its core offerings.

Antivirus is more than just protection from common threats. It’s peace of mind. It security and it’s the ability to demonstrate affective measures regarding the safety of your infrastructure and the new data protection law.

Meet The Author