This blog is syndicated from the LabTech Software Blog: http://www.labtechsoftware.com/blog/antivirus-and-anti-malware-tips/
Think your clients are covered? Think again.
This year’s epic flu season isn’t relegated to humans alone. The burgeoning threat landscape is better equipped than ever before to take your clients down—or at the very least lighten their wallets.
Oftentimes, clients are satisfied to keep running on last year’s version of an antivirus solution. It saves money and is more or less the same thing, right? Wrong. The landscape is evolving, and last year’s solution won’t defend against this year’s threats.
Take phishing, for instance. It’s a lucrative activity. Millions of people collectively lose $1.5 billionper year by falling victim to phishing scams.
It’s the hope of getting a piece of that growing pie that keeps hordes of hackers working around the clock to develop the next big scam. As threats evolve, your solutions have to evolve with them.
Every antivirus solution has an expiration date. Like spoiled milk, last year’s solution isn’t going to deliver the results you’re looking for. You must routinely update and refresh your solutions if you want to keep clients safe.
Why Your Clients Are Saying ‘Yes’ To Malware
Malware is cleverly disguising itself as routine software updates, so more often than not, clients opt in to infections without even knowing it. These silent threats masquerade as Adobe Reader updates, virus scans, and seemingly harmless error messages.
As if that weren’t bad enough, these menaces are getting more complex. Advanced social engineering methods are spawning additive infection vectors. This means that multiple pieces of malware work in tandem to ensure the client’s end point is fully compromised and exploited.
What You Need to Know to Offer the Best Protection
We will walk through four of the latest and most notorious infectors used by malware authors to gain access to the endpoint. We’ll wrap up with key features of a winning antivirus/anti-malware solution so you’re prepared to defend against even the most cunning of tactics.
1) Advanced Keylogging Crushers. We’re all familiar with keyloggers. And while they might sound old school, they’re still evolving and sneaking through firewalls undetected.
- Culprit: Zeus Malware. This keylogging troublemaker is a Trojan that runs on Microsoft operating systems. It sneaks past users in the form of a familiar Adobe Reader or Flash upgrade, and it captures everything the client types until it’s removed.
- Must-Have: To keep keyloggers at bay, look for a dynamic antivirus/anti-malware solution that can penetrate and neutralize multi-layer attacks. Threats aren’t one-dimensional anymore, and your client’s virtual protection shouldn’t be either.
2) Rogue Anti-Malware Slayers. Also known as ‘rogues’ or ‘FakeAV,’ these threats target inexperienced users. As the names imply, these scams masquerade as antivirus solutions.
- Culprits: Countless Fake Antivirus Popups. While the names vary, the effects are the same. These threats have evolved by developing more realistic graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and ‘action center windows’ that are completely interactive and look legit to the untrained eye. If clients click through, they’re asked to submit payment information, which is then sold to the highest bidder on sites like CVV2s.in and crackhackforum.com.
- Must-Have: Since this is a long-standing scam, you’ll want an antivirus solution that updates its FakeAV index as frequently as possible. There will always be new ones popping up, so you’ll want to partner with a vendor who is committed to keeping their code current.
3) Powelik Pluggers. These threats hide in registries and silently pilfer client information. They can’t easily be caught by scanners because they don’t register as files.
- Culprit: Any Number of Vicious Malwares. This type of attack is probably the worst because it keeps coming back. The malware embeds itself so deeply in the system and evolves and updates the way it exploits so quickly that anything but the latest anti-malware solution will leave your clients out in the cold.
- Must-Have: The best defense here is a good offense. Once infected, it’s extremely challenging to completely remove the threat. By having a solid anti-malware solution in place that prevents the infection in the first place, your clients will be much better off in the long run.
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