Anti-Spam

Managed Business Antivirus

5 Reasons to Make the Switch to Managed Antivirus for Your Business

Antivirus for home and for business serve the same purposes: they prevent viruses, malware, and other forms of cyber threats from deleting your data and causing damage. However, when it comes to your business, there’s often much more at stake. Below are five reasons to consider making the switch to managed antivirus and even managed antispam for your business as soon as possible. #1 – There’s No Weak Link With traditional antivirus installed on every machine, individual employees are responsible for ensuring updates go through in a timely manner. All it takes is one missed update and your entire network is at risk – much like a weak link in a chain. When you choose managed antivirus instead, your employees are no longer individually responsible for the security of your network. Updates occur system-wide, routinely, and automatically. #2 – It Can’t Be Turned Off Another common issue with traditional antivirus installed on each machine is its tendency to slow things down. Because of the “hiccups,” employees will often turn off the antivirus while running multiple spreadsheets (or performing other RAM-heavy duties) and forget to turn it back on. This is another weak link, and it can wreak havoc on your network. Managed antivirus cannot be turned off at the user level. #3 – It Catches What Your Employees Don’t Today’s scammers and cyber criminals are getting better and better at what they do. There’s a good chance you’ve trained your employees in the best way to spot a phishing or spam email, but as the years go by, it’s getting more difficult to tell what’s real and what isn’t. Managed antivirus catches potentially harmful emails even when your employees cannot. #4 – Responses are Immediate If you accidentally opened an email that contained a virus, would you know it by looking? Many people wouldn’t, and by the time they figured it out, the damage could be extensive. When you choose managed antivirus, the response to any issues that slip through the cracks is immediate. In the event viruses or malware slip through your defenses, your provider will jump into action – 24 hours a day – to remove the threat. #5 – It’s More Cost Effective Licensing for individual machines and users can become quite expensive, even for small businesses with only a handful of machines. Managed antivirus tends to cost much less, and the value it provides is unbeatable. For a flat monthly fee, companies gain access to antivirus for all of their machines that is easily scalable, regularly (and automatically) updated, and free from flaws created in an unmanaged antivirus setting. Managed antivirus is a fantastic choice for businesses of all sizes. It solves many common problems, and in the event that something does go wrong, there’s a team of experts behind you to find an immediate solution. The best part is that in many cases, it’s far more cost-effective than individual licenses, but it comes with much more than just the software. A network security analysis can help you determine whether managed antivirus or other security measures are required.

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Virtual Threats

Is your Business Safe from Virtual Threats?

Did you know that 50% of small business owners think their businesses are too small to be targeted by the thieves of the virtual world? Contrary to popular belief, 72% of hacker attacks often happen to smaller firms – firms with less than 100 employees! So how prepared is your SMB? Here’s a checklist to help you find out how vulnerable you are to these attacks. 1. Do you have Antivirus protection? – An antivirus software program can protect you from threats that originate from emails such as phishing and virus attacks. However, the most striking fact is that 61% of small businesses don’t install any antivirus software! If you are one of them, then it’s time to change! 2. How sturdy is your Firewall? – A good firewall system protects your computers from the variety of threats that exist in the virtual world. Examples include harmful cookies, viruses, worms and other such malicious programs used by hackers. 3. Do you use a Spam filter? – Using a simple spam filter for your emails keeps junk out of your inbox. The bonus to having a good spam filter is that your employees save time, as they are not distracted by irrelevant emails, but the major perk here is that the potential virus and phishing threats are lessened as spam emails are unlikely to be opened. 4. Do you do backup your data regularly? – Agreed – backups don’t really protect your data, but they are the only way to recover it if data loss does happen. So, be sure you have a regular and reliable backup plan in place – and it is actually being deployed. Data loss can prove very costly—especially to SMBs, sometimes even resulting in them having to close down. Prevention is certainly better than a cure in such cases.

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Email Phishing

Is That Email a Phishing Scheme?

Research has revealed that over half of all users end up opening fraudulent emails and often even fall for them. Phishing is done with the aim of gathering personal information about you, generally related to your finances. The most common reason for the large number of people falling for fraudulent emails is that the phishing attempts are often so well-disguised that they escape the eyes of a busy email reader. Here are a few tips that help you identify whether that email really came from your bank or is another attempt at defrauding you… They are Asking for Personal Information Remember, no bank or financial institution asks you to share your key personal information via email, or even phone. So, if you get an email where they ask for your ATM PIN or your e-banking password, something’s amiss. The Links Seem to be Fake Phishing emails always contain links that you are asked to click on. You should verify if the links are genuine. Here are a few things to look for when doing that: Spelling – Check for the misspellings in the URL. For example, if your bank’s web address is www.bankofamerica.com, a phishing scheme email could misspell it as www.bankofamarica.com or www.bankofamerica-verification.com Disguised URLs – Sometimes, URLs can be disguised…meaning, while they look genuine, they ultimately redirect you to some fraudulent site. You can recognize the actual URL upon a mouseover, or by right clicking on the URL, and selecting the ‘copy hyperlink’ option and pasting the hyperlink on a notepad file. But, NEVER ever, paste the hyperlink directly into your web browser. URLs with ‘@’ signs – If you find a URL that has an ‘@’ sign, steer clear of it even if it seems genuine. Browsers ignore URL information that precedes @ sign. That means, the URL www.bankofamerica.com@mysite.net will take you to mysite.net and not to any Bank of America page. Other Tell-Tale Signs Apart from identifying fake URLs, there are other tell-tale signs that help you identify fraudulent emails. Some of these include: Emails where the main message is in the form of an image, which, upon opening, takes you to the malicious URL. Another sign is an attachment. Never open attachments from unknown sources as they may contain viruses that can harm your computer and network. The message seems to urge you to do something immediately. Scammers often induce a sense of urgency in their emails and threaten you with consequences if you don’t respond. For example, threat of bank account closure if you don’t verify your ATM PIN or e-banking password. Finally, get a good anti virus/email protection program installed. It can help you by automatically directing spam and junk mail into spam folders and deactivating malicious attachments. See how our Managed Antivirus and Anti-Spam service can help you today!  

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