Is Free Antivirus Software Enough?

Traditional antivirus has always been every company’s first line of defense to protect employees who still commit the usual mistakes that security experts tell everyone to avoid: opening malicious attachments, clicking unknown URLs, and visiting untrustworthy websites. In this context, these products may seem sufficient: they can identify bad files and known malware before they enter computers. Some may even think that free products represent a satisfactory solution for these threats.

However, targeted attacks that use sophisticated tools and techniques are now able to bypass these techniques. These techniques are used in order to aggressively pursue and compromise chosen targets to steal sensitive information.

Protecting your computer with antivirus software helps in blocking known malicious files, but what about lower-profile attacks that slip under the radar? These types of attacks may be attributed to “risky” employee behavior, some of which involve falling for social engineering tactics in the form of phishing scams and shortened or disguised URLs. Without more sophisticated and complete solutions that go beyond simple antivirus, users are at risk from these threats.

More complete products are able to deal with the sophisticated threats of today. For example, exploits can be minimized through the use of products with deep packet inspection (DPI) which block these threats at the network layer. Other tools block various threats at the browser/endpoint layer. To meet today’s complete threats, complete solutions are needed as well. Meeting these challenges is not free, but compared to the costs of a breach, they are minuscule.

Our primer for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) 5 Reasons Why Your Antivirus Software Is Not Enough” offers insights on the risks of solely relying on antivirus software. Our e-guide Why Free Antivirus Is Not Enough also details the security issues that computers face with free software.

Post from: Trendlabs Security Intelligence Blog – by Trend Micro

Is Free Antivirus Software Enough?