Cyber threats are forever changing; becoming more advanced, exploiting both unknown and known vulnerabilities and finding new ways to attack your systems. What hasn’t changed is the fundamentals of threat protection: good antivirus software and installing operating system patches promptly. Antivirus software protects systems by looking for malicious code then stopping it from accessing the device or data. The operating system is the core software that controls how your computer operates. Whether you use Apple, Microsoft, Android or Linux, vulnerabilities in the software are found almost daily. The developer will create fixes for these vulnerabilities and release them as patches or updates. It is vital that both the antivirus software and patches are updated as soon as updates are available – the period between a vulnerability being found and a patch been deployed is the high-risk zone where infection is most likely.
When challenged, most small business owners will give the same response “it happens automatically”.
However, once we start auditing their devices, we find that the automatic updates have failed, the antivirus software has expired, been disabled or removed completely. There are a never-ending variety of reasons why it hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t change the fact that those systems are high risk!
ESET Security Management Centre – monitor and maintain endpoint security
This is where centralised management becomes a game changer. At PAAC IT we use ESET’s Security Management Center (ESMC) to monitor and maintain endpoint security. ESMC displays a dashboard overview of all protected machines. From a glance we can see what the state of security is across all devices. This includes laptops, desktops, phones and tablets running any operating system.
Using ESMC we can identify which devices are at risk allowing us to take action to protect them. ESMC has advanced features allowing us to push updates, restart devices and remotely fix security concerns. If ESMC is unable to resolve issues automatically it will trigger an alert to our helpdesk for one of our technicians to resolve.
Centralised security management should be more than just ‘nice to have’.
Are your devices proactively managed?