Have you ever wondered why you still get viruses / malware on your company’s PC’s even though you have purchased security software from a reputable vendor?
It’s a good question and one that you need to understand if you want to minimise the operational cost of running your business. After all, every time you
need to call an engineer it costs you money, and not just in terms of cheques that you write to your IT support company. In addition, there is the cost of
lost employee productivity caused by degraded performance as your system becomes unusable, as well as the time lost while your employee waits for their
system to be rebuilt. So what should you do to ensure that you don't waste money on engineer call-outs and lost productivity?
IT Security Is A Process
You have to recognise that IT Security doesn’t just involve installing software. You have to make sure that you perform necessary housekeeping on a regular
basis. Specifically, it is essential to keep your systems updated with the latest updates and patches for Microsoft Windows and common applications such as
Adobe and Java to protect you against the latest security issues that are discovered.
The reason that regular maintenance is so critical is that newly discovered software bugs (also known as vulnerabilities) are used by hackers and
fraudsters to plant malicious software on your PC’s. These are the cracks in your defences that allow your security to be breached even with security
software installed.
It is likely if not inevitable that you will suffer malware infections at some point if you allow your employees to access the internet. Hackers and
security companies are locked in a constant battle that is played out on your IT systems on a daily basis. When a new bug is found, hackers move quickly
to write and distribute code that allows them to exploit it before the security companies react with countermeasures to identify and foil their attempts.
Each time a new bug is found, a number of PC’s are infected before the new updates are installed.
To give you some idea of the scale of the problem, in 2012, Secunia (the industry reference point on IT security) issued 124 “Security Advisories” for
Windows 7 covering 237 vulnerabilities, of which 5% remain unresolved at the time of writing this article. Internet Explorer 9 was the subject of 14
security advisories covering 70 vulnerabilities of which 7% are not yet resolved. These are just two of the most common items of software installed on
your PC’s, yet we are already talking about a new security threat being discovered almost every day.
How To Keep Your Systems Up-To-Date
Your PC’s should prompt you to update Microsoft Windows, as well as applications such as Adobe and Java on a regular basis. If you ever see a message that
an update has failed to install, you need to do something about it. The reason that the update has failed is very often that you have unwittingly
downloaded some malware from a “hacked” or malicious website. If this is the case, malware can be silently gathering your login credentials and feeding
them back to a hacker without you realising it. Very often your PC will start to run more slowly as the malware starts to take up resources. To make things
worse, once malware finds a victim it will often send out for its friends, which themselves take up more resources until your PC becomes unusable and needs
to be rebuilt.
Do It Yourself Or Call In The Experts?
It is understandable that many small business owners still take a reactive approach to IT security. Taking time to make sure that the latest Windows
updates and patches have been successfully applied, or making sure that antivirus software on your workstations hasn’t been disabled by malware takes time
and takes you away from running your business. The problem is that unless you do spend time making these checks, you are far more likely to suffer a
malware attack.
If you are happy to maintain your own systems, you can buy PC Audit software which will identify systems that aren’t updating properly, or that show other
signs that they have been infected by malware. Otherwise, you may be better off outsourcing the process of regular auditing and updating your IT systems to
a Managed IT Service Provider who will be able to use automation software to manage the process more efficiently and cost effectively than you are able to do
yourself. They will also be able to undertake a number of other essential housekeeping tasks at the same time such as clearing out temporary files and
making sure that PC Hard disks are defragmented on a regular basis, which will also boost your system performance.
If you would like to know more about the IT Support or Managed IT Services that we provide, please download our Managed IT Services White Paper, visit our
web site, or contact us by telephone on 01707 255060 or via email at info@clearview.co.uk
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