What is advanced malware?
Advanced Malware is essentially malware that is very good at disguising its presence both to human users and basic malware protection software.
Advanced malware creators understand how basic malware protection monitors for certain activities, and then design their malware to operate without triggering those alarm bells so to speak.
What is Advanced Malware Protection (AMP)?
Advanced Malware Protection is an enterprise’s best answer to advanced malware.
Not only does AMP make it possible to detect some of the most sophisticated malware threats, it can take pressure off employees to make decisions about suspicious emails by automatically monitoring and isolating any sort of suspicious activity.
Stop sophisticated threats with advanced malware protection
As the landscape of email-born threats continues to evolve, only advanced malware protection can help you avoid disruptions and breaches that can wind up damaging your business in significant ways.
From phishing and spear-phishing to ransomware, email spoofing and impersonation attack campaigns, advanced malware threats continue to plague businesses in every industry. As soon as you deploy protection against one threat, cyber criminals devise new methods to circumvent your defenses. A routine email virus checker is no longer enough. To truly protect your users, your data and your business, you need advanced malware protection that can recognize and combat emerging threats in addition to known methods of attack. That's where Mimecast can help.
How does Advanced Malware Protection work?
Advanced Malware Protection scans inbound emails more thoroughly than basic malware protection by looking in more areas that could indicate a potential threat as well as more types of anomalies. For example, Mimecast’s AMP scans all inbound emails’ headers, domains, and content, whereas a more basic malware protection model may only scan content.
The key value of Mimecast’s AMP is that it can identify and isolate potential threats before they have a chance to reach users.
3 types of advanced malware protection
Signature-Based Malware Detection
Commonly used as a first line of defense, signature-based malware detection looks at software components to identify commonly known threats, such as keyloggers, adware, or ransomware.
Behavior-Based Malware Detection
Behavior-based Malware detection monitors for suspicious behavior, such as file extraction or compression, that could be happening “behind the scenes” of a user’s computer.
Sandboxing
Sandboxing is essentially using a controlled, virtual environment to monitor danger of an incoming file. For example, a user opens an email attachment, a sandbox will run the file in a safe environment in order to see if anything suspicious starts to emerge from it. The file will be quarantined and restricted to users if anything suspicious occurs, or passed along to the user if it is deemed safe.
Advanced malware protection from Mimecast
Mimecast provides advanced malware protection in a cloud-based solution that also delivers tools for email archiving, continuity, backup and recovery, e-Discovery and compliance. Rather than deploying multiple point solutions to address individual threats, Mimecast provides everything businesses need in a single solution for cloud email protection.
Offered as part of an all-in-one subscription service, Mimecast advanced malware protection can be rolled out quickly, with no hardware, software or IT overhead. Mimecast provides administrators with complete visibility and control over business email management, with all services accessible through a web-based interface and a single pane of glass. It's no wonder that tens of thousands of companies worldwide rely on Mimecast to improve cyber resilience, streamline IT compliance and simplify business email management.
Benefits of advanced malware protection: Comprehensive tools for advanced malware protection
Mimecast's solutions for advanced malware protection include:
- Secure Email Gateway, where multilayered detection engines and sophisticated threat intelligence help to stop viruses, malware and spam before they reach users.
- URL protection, with URL analysis of every link in every email and attachment, checking the validity of websites on first click and every subsequent click to avoid succumbing to delayed attacks.
- Detection from malicious attachments, with the ability to sandbox attachments or convert them to safe formats.
- Protection from impersonation attacks, using real-time scanning of all inbound emails to detect anomalies in headers, domains and content, and to validate them with DNS authentication services like SPF, DKIM and DMARC. (What is DMARC?)
- Ransomware protection, preventing email-born ransomware infections and archiving email to neutralize the impact of ransomware attacks.
- Protection from internal threats, scanning all email leaving the organization or sent to colleagues within the organization and blocking email that contains potential threats or data leaks.
By automating advanced malware protection with Mimecast, IT teams can spend less time focused on threat protection and more time on strategic priorities to move the business forward.
Advanced Malware Protection FAQs
Why is advanced malware protection important for enterprises?
Enterprises are often targeted by “big game hunters” or cyber criminals who go after organizations with large budgets. These criminals will invest in and develop the most sophisticated technology that they possibly can in hopes of hitting the jackpot with an organization that didn’t adapt quickly enough to the modern standards of cyber security.
Advanced Malware Protection does its job well in defending against attempted cyber attacks, and its mere presence sends a message to cyber criminals that your organization is no easy target. Sometimes that can be enough to deter them from even trying.
What are the differences between malware and advanced malware?
The difference between malware and advanced malware really comes down to sophistication. Malware is an all-encompassing term for software that is designed to extort or harm, whereas advanced malware refers to the most state-of-the-art sophisticated malware that is designed to bypass cyber security systems.
Fortunately, advanced malware protection is an answer to both types of threats. Well-known cyber threats will have near-zero chances of penetrating AMPs that will recognize them instantly, and other modern threats will likely have such a difficult time that cyber criminals are likely to move on to what they perceive will be an easier target.
