Use these 7 steps to prevent malware attacks

When it comes to cybersecurity, businesses need to understand two different approaches – Proactive and reactive. Both are equally important. Reactive approach refers to the set of steps that you take for damage control, but the first approach should be proactive, so that you can prevent a cyberattack in the first place. Malware remains one of the key cyber concerns for businesses around the globe, and despite so much being written about ways in which hackers use malware, businesses do fall prey to malware attacks time and again. In this post, we are sharing more on what you can do to prevent malware attacks.

  1. Inform your employees. Unless your teams know what types of malware threats, they may have to deal with, they cannot be proactive. Conduct training workshops and guide your employees on how they can identify, report a malware.
  2. Get rid of outdated software. If your devices have unused & outdated software, especially legacy software, uninstall the same. Also, all software, firmware and operating systems should be updated to the latest version.
  3. Focus on emails. Emails remain one of the key sources of malware files and programs, and it is important to use some form of spam filter. Ask your employees to report emails that may have malware.
  4. Strengthen the passwords. Weak passwords remain an easy tool for hackers. Get your employees to create long & strong passwords, with no personal information, and ensure that they don’t repeat or reuse passwords.
  5. Recommend a password manager. For an employee, who is handling five different devices and many other resources, remembering complex passwords can be hard. To make things simple, recommend a reliable password management tool.
  6. Change default passwords. For hackers, it doesn’t take a lot to hack a default password and install a malware file on your system. Make sure that you change all default passwords as soon as the product has been deployed.
  7. Use Antivirus and antimalware software. There are some really effective suites that offer protection against viruses and different types of malware, including ransomware. Avoid the free ones, and get one that is meant for business use.

Besides the preventative game plan, ensure that you have an incident response plan in place. In case a malware attack happens, your employees need to know what must be done, and the incident response plan sets a series of steps that can minimize damage. For antimalware programs, do check reviews before selecting one.

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