How AV Defender is protecting our customers

With information security topping many priority lists for small business owners these days, it’s never been more important to make sure you have the right level of protection for your organisation.

Anti-virus or anti-malware software (AV) has been around as long as I can remember and has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 10 years – and with good reason too. Multiple sources report that around 65,000 hacking attempts are made on small and medium businesses in the UK every day, with around 7% of those being successful. Those may sound like decent odds, but to put that into perspective, each year there are 1,6 million successful breaches on SME’s in the UK. If you’re not taking this seriously yet, it’s only a matter of time until it’s your turn.

AV has gone well beyond its original purpose of detecting and removing known viruses on your computer back in the 80’s. As the threats evolved, so has the protection. All anti-virus software will still have that ability to detect a threat and take remedial action, but it’s the prevention methods that are the bits to get excited about. Don’t get me wrong, the good guys will always be playing catch-up and no matter how good your protection is, you are still likely to be at risk.

Most of our customers will know that we offer Security Manager AV Defender as one of the tools to build a solid defence against attack. It’s a product packaged by N-Able N-Central (our remote management tool) that has been around for a few years now. The software itself is a repackaged version of Bitdefender – probably one of the best-known AV’s out there today. We do offer other solutions, but we quite like AV Defender, for its features just as much as its easy deployment and management. Here’s a little more about how the software protects our customers…

AV Defender is a solid all-in-one solution to protect customer devices and networks. Built on the award-winning Bitdefender security software, the solution stays up to date with the latest virus signatures to detect known threats and provides some extra network protection features. Here’s what’s included:

Anti-Malware

Malware a collective name for disruptive software that includes viruses, worms, trojan horses, ransomware, spyware etc. that gains access to computers and collects information. AV Defender detects and blocks malware threats before they can inflict damage to devices. The module can provide on-access scanning which prevents new malware threats from entering a device, or an on-demand scan can be run automatically in the background at a regular interval set by the user.

Anti-Phishing

Phishing is a malicious attempt to gather your sensitive information such as credit card numbers, login details etc. via email. It typically occurs when an email is sent looking very much like it came from a reputable source. The email often tries to get the recipient to perform an action from within the email which would take them to a malicious site where you are prompted to log in to an account or even to download a malicious file.

Anti-phishing protection automatically blocks known spoofing sites to prevent people from inadvertently disclosing private or confidential information.

Behavioural Analysis

Think of this as the brains of the operation. The Behavioural Analysis module is the software’s decision engine. It examines the behaviour of a file, determines if that file may be a threat and deals with it appropriately. The integrated Intrusion Detection System (IDS) detects and blocks any attempts made to change critical system files, registry keys or drivers as well as any attacks performed by code injection (DLL injection). It isolates the threat to prevent any further damage to the integrity of your network.

Content Control

The Content Control module provides a means to restrict what people can access and send over the Internet. You can restrict access to sites with content deemed inappropriate such as gambling or mature themes. The content control settings can be configured to prevent personal or sensitive information (such as credit card numbers or addresses) from being sent outside of your network.

Firewall

The Firewall module can be used to control access to network resources and services and to the Internet by specified applications.

Much like Microsoft’s Defender Firewall, this feature is best used when working remotely. We recommend turning off the AV Defender firewall if you are secure behind a hardware firewall.

Network traffic scans

This module provides data protection for email (POP3 and SMTP) and user web browsing (HTTP and HTTPS/SSL) in real time, and scans various types of network traffic for potential security threats. AV Defender catches infected emails and automatically blocks access to websites containing malware.

There you have it, a very competent Anti-virus solution without breaking the budget. There are plenty of worthy alternatives out there but AV Defender certainly gets the nod from us if you’re looking for good protection at a reasonable price. Remember that AV is only one piece of the puzzle when protecting your business from all those hacking attempts. You should always combine a good Anti-virus software with regular patching and system backups, device encryption, access control and of course, regular user awareness training.