>> Hello. Okay, how do we defend against malware?
The best way to deal with
>> malware is to just not get it.
>> You do this by having
good anti-malware software installed.
It should include antivirus scanning
and some behavior-based scans.
That is kept up-to-date with
>> the virus definition files.
>> It should include anti-spyware and anti adware,
and you need to make sure that
>> you have your system scan
>> regularly and make sure
you keep the definition files up-to-date.
The threat landscape is changing all the time,
so it's important to stay up-to-date.
Usually this is something that
network administrators will take care of.
You also need to make sure you
are patching systems that need it.
Often when news of malware makes it into the media,
a remedy for it will already be available.
But it's hard to keep up with all the patches,
so you need to have a system that
makes it easy to stay up to date.
If you are not familiar with
Microsoft Patch Tuesday, you will be.
Microsoft dumps tons of updates out regularly,
and you need a way to prioritize
the patches to keep up with.
Another good defense against
malware is make sure you have
good clean baseline images
that you can revert back to you if you need to.
Then also change management
>> and configuration management.
>> System should be locked down so that users
can't install any piece of software that they want.
Especially users who are guest to the network.
Everyday users should not be making
changes to the baseline images of the systems.
If you allow users to make changes, they will.
When I got started as
a help desk technician in the mid-1990s,
I remember getting a call from an end-user.
The persons of their system was performing solely,
so I got there and I took a look at
the system and the person
had bands I buddy running on it.
I don't know if you're familiar with this,
but it was a purple gorilla
that would follow your mouse all over the screen,
and back then with one megabyte of memory on machines,
something like that would take up a lot of
resources and make things perform solely.
Today change management would
prevent a user from downloading something like that,
potentially introducing malware onto the system.
Your big takeaways in the world of malware,
malware can get distributed in a lot of different ways,
it can take on a lot of different forms.
Be particularly careful for Trojans.
These are things that people download
because they seem like they would be helpful,
but they're actually infected with malicious software.
You can have viruses and worms.
The big difference between
>> the two is that a virus needs
>> a user action and it needs
a host to live on like an application.
Whereas a worm spreads from system to system to system.
The best way to deal with malware is just don't get it.
Use good anti-malware software.
Update your systems, run your scans regularly,
lock your users down with good policies,
so they don't install garbage on your systems.