ForceNow Blog

Why Antivirus Is Not Enough To Protect Your Small Business

Written by Jonathan Steenland | Nov 16, 2021 4:05:54 PM

Yesterday's solutions don't work today, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.

This is a problem for you and your company. You will be hit with modern attacks like ransomware and business email compromise, and when (not if) you do, you'll realize that the solutions which worked in the past, aren't sufficient to protect your data and business today.

 

There's a massive cybersecurity gap between the haves (large enterprises) and the haves not (small businesses), and hackers are actively targeting and exploiting that gap.

 

Most large companies would never consider relying on traditional antivirus alone. They have dedicated cybersecurity teams who provide 24x7 management and monitoring of multiple technologies including firewalls, EDR (endpoint detection & response), IDS (intrusion detection system), and WAPs (web application firewalls). This is a best practice commonly referred to as "defense-in-depth".

 

It's understandable that small businesses can't afford to have these types of dedicated resources in-house. However, they do need more than traditional antivirus if they want to survive, because hackers know they are the weakest link in the supply chain.

 

Here are three reasons why traditional antivirus protection isn't enough and what small businesses can do to protect themselves. 

1. Mutants and Machines
The AV-Test Institute detects at least 350k new malware mutations daily which accounts for approximately 77.7% of all new threats, the remaining are "known malware". Traditional antivirus software like Norton and McAfee relies on signatures to detect "known malware" and is unable to keep up with all of the mutations. Newer EDR (Endpoint Detection & Response) solutions like SentinelOne and Cylance use machine-learning to detect and block new threats and known malware in real-time. These technologies also allow cybersecurity pros to investigate and respond to security incidents much quicker, with minimal impact to the business.

 

2. Cybersecurity Is A Human Game
Many people think "cybersecurity is an IT problem". The fact is, that in the cat and mouse game of cybersecurity, humans are both the attackers and the victims and technology is simply a tool used to attack and defend. All cybersecurity technologies generate alerts that can be true or false positives. Newer EDR technologies do a great job of "reducing the noise" and helping triage events. However, a human analyst is still required to investigate and respond to critical alerts, because it takes a human to defeat a human.

 

3. Cybersecurity Poses An Existential Risk To Small Businesses
68% of small businesses experienced a cyber attack last year and 47% were hit with ransomware. The average cost for a data breach is $120k - $1.24M.
25% of small businesses file for bankruptcy after a successful cyber attack and 9.7% go out of business. Is traditional antivirus really working today?

 

Why wait until you've been a victim to update your cybersecurity protection? 

 

ForceNow offers comprehensive 24x7 military and enterprise-grade managed detection and response for small businesses as low as $19/month and can be deployed in 5 minutes.

 

We bring the best cybersecurity technologies and the best cybersecurity professionals to you, so that you can focus on the rest.