The best solutions and software to protect against malware

Worried about malware? As an IT professional, you can’t guarantee that your end-user networks will never experience malware attacks, but you can make sure that you’re prepared for any eventuality.

The best cybersecurity solutions cover you from multiple fronts, preparing your environment ahead of time in case of a breach, monitoring for any signs of unusual activity, plus providing features and tools that limit the impact of malware and get you up and running again quickly. Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) is a crucial component in this toolkit, providing advanced capabilities to detect, investigate, and respond to threats. In this article, we discuss the growing threat of malware and the challenges of securing today’s IT networks, and then describe four Atera integrations that can shore up your defenses ahead of time. Hold your breath, ’cause we’re taking a deep dive!

What features should I be thinking about when I look for an anti-malware solution?

First up, recognize that you’ll never stop all malware from breaching your four walls as an IT professional. Sorry, but it’s true.

Whether you’re managing a corporate IT environment, or whether you’re an MSP juggling multiple customer networks, you can’t protect against everything. And y’know what? Your customers and colleagues might not even expect you to. However, you can limit the impact once an attack occurs, and your end users will definitely expect you to have a plan in place both before and after an attack.

The vast majority of malware still starts from phishing emails, where employees click on malicious links or download suspicious files by mistake.

However, the real problem comes when that malware injection spreads across the network, moving from one employee to another. According to the State of Email Security report, in 2020, 61% of organizations experienced malware that spread across a network. in 2021, that percentage rose to 74%, and in 2022, it’s already hit 75% — the highest number since the research began.

Attackers tend to spread a wide net, hoping to find a vulnerability in just a single endpoint or trick just one user into clicking in the wrong place. From here, they establish a foothold and then move across a network by escalating credentials and access, or by finding connectivity between users. This is how one employee or workstation can become a single point of failure.

Implementing principles like least privilege and adding network segmentation can limit the impact, even if your environment is breached. Another large threat is ransomware, where files are encrypted and held for ransom or destroyed. A robust backup solution is crucial to quickly recover your business operations.

Finally, the cybersecurity skills gap is a significant concern. Last year, 80% of organizations suffered breaches attributed to a skills gap or lack of awareness. Education is part of the answer, but automation is equally vital. Smart, automated solutions can handle complex environments and ensure security is manageable, even for those without a strong security background.

Your IT framework plays a crucial role in how effectively you can deploy these solutions. By integrating robust cybersecurity tools and practices into your IT framework, you can better safeguard your environment and respond to threats efficiently.

Atera’s Top Integrations for Enhanced Cybersecurity

Let’s explore the features of four of Atera’s standout integrations and how they can help you fend off cyberattacks.

Webroot

Webroot has a wide range of features that work to combat malware in your IT environments. For example, the company works against keylogging software with targeted identity theft protection, protecting usernames, credentials, financial details such as account numbers, and any other personal data. You’ll get real-time anti-phishing technology and security scans that are one of the fastest in the industry, at 20 seconds flat. Webroot has endpoint protection and DNS protection so that all your bases are covered.

One great addition that comes with Webroot is protection for even offline devices. Think about your local disks, USB drives, and removable storage drives such as CD and DVD drives. These need protection, too. You can set separate file execution policies to make sure these devices are secure before allowing content onto the network.

To combat the skills gap, and to help to educate employees, customers and partners, Webroot and Atera can also be used for Security Awareness Training, educating against falling for phishing scams, and offering general security hygiene for all users, from newbies to business vets. Behind the scenes, DNS protection supports you in case the education is not bulletproof, offering 8 URL categories and the ability to set policies to block suspicious content according to your needs.

Read more about setting up Webroot and Atera, including predictive prevention and multi-layered defense.

Bitdefender

Antimalware for Bitdefender uses security content scanning and heuristic analysis, and works against a wide range of malware injections, including worms and viruses, trojans, spyware and adware, key-logging software, rootkits, and more.

The first step is a traditional scanning method, where the content is compared against patterns held in a database for any anomalies. This database contains all known threats and will stop any attack that uses a known attack method. Of course, this leaves a time when your devices are vulnerable to zero-day threats which are new, undocumented, and not updated in the threat database. As a result, the heuristic engine is used to detect malware based on how it behaves. A sandbox virtual environment is used to test the impact of content on the system, risk-free — and only if no threat is detected, the program will be allowed to run.

GravityZone can be configured to work in a customized way depending on its endpoints. For example, you can run a local scan on-premises, a hybrid scan for better resource consumption on the cloud, or a central scan on the private or public cloud.

Don’t forget to check out all the other great features that you get with Bitdefender on Atera, such as threat control, anti-exploit, risk management, firewall, network protection, and more.

Ironscales

Ironscales boasts real-time anti-malware and phishing protection, and as we said, the vast majority of malware is coming directly through an employee’s inbox. According to Ironscales, more than 350,000 new variants of malware are being discovered daily, and attackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in how they sneak past your defenses.

Ironscales’ multi-layered approach looks at your content and communication, isolates patterns in behaviors, and then builds profiles for what normal relationships look like within your company. All malware threats, as well as suspicious URLs and any malicious attachments, are removed in real-time. You’ll get:

• Automated inspections of all links and attachments across all employee inboxes, with zero gaps.
• Best-of-breed malware and antivirus engines, using more than 60 engines for a complete view.
• Inspections of all attachments and URLs with collaborative threat intelligence based on relationship analysis.

Learn more about the Ironscales integration with Atera, and how you can benefit from AI-powered incident response, a virtual Security Operations Center (SOC) analyst, and mailbox-level anomaly detection.

Malwarebytes

Last but by no means least, Malwarebytes offers protection against advanced online threats, from ransomware to spyware and beyond. At Atera, we integrate with Malwarebytes OneView, offering a holistic solution against a broad range of potential cyberattacks, and full visibility and control.

Take incident response for example. When the worst occurs, you want to be able to get back up and running as quickly as possible. Malwarebytes promises a compressed response time, with policies in place to automatically restore data from the cloud, and perform complete breach mitigation.

Malwarebytes also offers a multi-tenant console, perfect for MSPs who have multiple customers to manage, and also for corporate IT professionals who work across multiple sites. From a single dashboard, you can gain endpoint health and status alerts, licensing and subscription management, and data and reporting both real-time and historical.

As well as Incident Response, with Atera customers can enjoy Malwarebytes Endpoint Protection, Endpoint Protection and Response, Endpoint Protection for Servers, and Endpoint Protection and Response for Servers. It’s a smorgasbord of cybersecurity goodness, and you can read about it all right here.

Upping your cybersecurity game for good

Today’s businesses don’t separate IT services from cybersecurity, whether they are hiring in-house or looking for a third-party managed service provider. Managing an IT environment and securing it are one and the same.

Luckily, when you’re using an all-in-one software solution like Atera, you can take your pick of the right cybersecurity tools that meet your precise network needs, assess and monitor the risk landscape, as well as spotting and managing threats early, and recovering quickly in case of a security incident.

Want to learn more about Atera’s integrations and add-ons? Right this way.