Malware refers to malicious software that causes harm to computers. These programs can steal, delete, or even encrypt data. They can also take over your devices to attack other organizations, or obtain credentials that allow access to systems or services your company uses. Mostly, ransomware is referred to as malware, but files may not be decrypted even after a ransom has been paid, in what is known as data deletion software.

Since there is no way to completely protect your organization from malware infection, a ‘defense-in-depth approach’ is required, which means using layers of defense against these attacks with many mitigations in each layer, thus increasing the chances of Detect malware before it causes real harm to your organization.

Some of the necessary measures that can reduce the risk of malware attacks are regular data backup, preventing the spread of malware between enterprise devices, as well as pre-incident preparedness, and preventing these programs from running on devices.

In the event of actual infection with these programs, the cybersecurity administrator can take some steps that help reduce the impact of these programs. The administrator should immediately disconnect the infected computer, laptop, or tablet from all network connections, whether wired or wireless. It is also important to reset credentials including passwords (especially for administrator and other system accounts).

It is also necessary to safely scan infected devices, reinstall the operating system, verify that the backup is free of any malware, and then connect the devices to a clean network to download, install and update the operating system and all other software. It’s also worth noting that you should download, update, and run antivirus software before restarting the network, monitor traffic on it, and run scans to determine if it’s free of any further infection.