If The Marketplace Distrusts and Has Moved Away From Legacy Anti-Virus and Switched To Next-Generation Endpoint Protection To Escape Ransomware Infection, Why Are You Keeping It?
All the way back in 2006, the word was getting out that Anti-Virus software must retire and make way for the Cloud, Next-Generation Endpoint Protection. AV served its purpose when systems were simpler. And hacking was a college prank, not a malicious attack for financial gain.
Ransomware, Malware, and non-Malware exploits were infants. Legacy AV could carry the load. But in this day and time, they’ve grown up, and 53% of US organizations are blaming their tired, outdated Anti-Virus, as the cause for not preventing a Ransomware attack. Could your Legacy Anti-Virus be one of them?
It Takes A Cool Million to Plunk Down and Recover, From a Ransomware Attack.
$900.000 a year, is the average cost an individual company spends, on the Ransomware attack, paying the ransom monies, time used to respond, and productive labor time lost. In the US alone, the lost work time equals 44-man hours, responding to an attack, from attack to complete recovery.
44-man hours! That’s a little over a week’s work for one employee. The cost translates into paying that person’s salary, to do a job, you did not hire them to do. Is this good or wrong time management?
Do you know the percentages your Partners and Supply Chain suffered from your infestation?
Research recently provided by SentinelOne shows your affliction has a vast, direct and negative impact, on your Partners and third-party vendors. What happened to your company, magnified their loss and downtime, both in productivity and revenue, it’s the proverbial “domino effect.”
Let’s look at those numbers SentinelOne provided:
- 46% Downtime – Your Partners and third-party vendors suffered;
- 35% Loss of productivity – Your Partners and third-party vendors suffered;
- 20% Loss of revenue – Your Partners and third-party vendors suffered.
So, who’s to blame?
Worthless legacy antivirus software? Careless employees? Decision makers? Yes. All three have a hand in it. And we’ll explain how.
Let’s start with the legacy antivirus software.
According to Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway Company, “Legacy vendors have failed to build solutions for new vectors – specifically, many legacy AVs still lack basic anti-exploit capabilities.” The key word here is “Exploit.” Exploiting is what a Ransomware programming pirate knows and uses against you and your system.
Legacy anti-virus solutions are not able to keep up. Innovation is inadequate. The volume of attacks from:
- DDoS Attacks
- Malware Attacks
- Ransomware Exploits
- Viruses
Can not be charted. Hundreds of thousands of new strains appear daily. The best legacy anti-virus can’t keep up. It is overwhelming. And here’s why.
AV infection solving depends on long-established signature-based identification methods to search for digital threats. What it struggles to overcome in today’s world, is the new strains. They are Signature-less and Fileless. The dangers go unchallenged and give a cyber-thief an easy way to access any unprotected enterprise networks.
The second culprit is the carelessness of employees.
According to Ponemon Institute’s 2017 State of SMB Cybersecurity report, sponsored by Keeper Security, The number one most significant cyber threat to your business is your employees. The cause of a breach was a whopping 54% from negligent employees.
But what makes them negligent? For starters device convenience. 50% of your data is accessible from a mobile phone. Not just a company-issued device. It could be a spouse or friend’s phone. A company, of any size, is a target. If your employee has 3 bars in the middle of the Sahara desert, your data can be accessed.
Secondly, your security and policies have gaps making it difficult to enforce your employees to follow proper protocols. According to the research, password policies lacked strict enforcement, 68% of the time. And 58% had no or unclear direction into password practices.
The third and final enabler.
I hate to be the one that says it, but the business owner or decision maker(s) prevent their protection from a Ransomware attack. They hang on to old beliefs. “It won’t happen to us.” Or “It costs too much to swap our legacy antivirus for endpoint solutions.”
45% in this group will pay the ransom, to get their files unlocked and returned, rather than the 55% that credit Cloud, Next Generation Endpoint protection. But those who spent to get their files back were targeted again and again and were attacked 73% of the time. The cyber-criminal sees that business as a bank atm. When they need some cash, it’s paid up or lose your files.
According to {company} Ransomware Specialists, “Cybercriminals will continually perfect their ransomware attacks. They will bypass your Legacy Anti-Virus. They will trick non-trained employees into infecting their organization. They will make you pay their ransom demands or sell your data to the highest bidder.”
Of the 70% who swapped from Legacy Anti-Virus over to Next Generation Endpoint protection, 96% are confident they will prevent future attacks.