You are on a website when suddenly the website was replaced with this message: “Cloud Antivirus has noticed that you are at risk, please enter your credit card number below so you can be protected.” I hope that you read that and realize immediately that something is wrong. One of the more common threats businesses are faced with lately is dealing with effects of fake antivirus applications.
How to tell if it’s a fake antivirus
Fake antivirus applications usually have some resemblance of legitimacy. They will almost always have the appearance of a similar product that is legitimate. The best way to know if the software is legitimate is to ask your IT person. If you don’t have an IT guy and do the work yourself, you should be able to remember if it was something you chose to install. Since the fake antivirus applications are malicious in nature, they can’t be easily removed.
What a fake antivirus application can do
There are numerous reasons why you should immediately have your IT person or IT firm remove these threats immediately. These malicious programs can find and submit your personal address book, send out your passwords, allow access into your network for more malicious actions and capture credit cards. Since they do usually look somewhat legitimate, we find that a large number of employees at our clients’ locations enter their company credit card numbers in to fix the problem as they’re prompted to do.
How to protect against fake antivirus threats
The fake antivirus apps are usually introduced to your network by suspect website visits. The most basic way to thwart these threats is to have an up-to-date network antivirus program installed on every computer and server on your network. This is the first building block of security. The next step is to ensure that all software updates are being performed to plug security holes on your systems. The final step is to have an active firewall installed that can scan for and remove a large number of these threats before they can reach your computers and servers. This acts as a shield for your network, and it actively defends your network for you.
There is no single 100% effective method to prevent against these threats. However, with utilization of our three tier plan, you can greatly minimize your exposure to these malicious software attacks.
Call us today at 601-518-0420 for a free consultation on how to help lock down your network.
