Points of intrusion into a corporate network

• With huge number of new viruses appearing every day there is no way that an anti-virus can know them all — the risk of infection with an unknown virus is always there.
• E-mail is no longer the main source of infection even in highly protected environments. It has been superseded by removable media, particularly, by flash drives.

  Important! Removable media includes not only flash-drives but any USB devices! A virus can be transmitted from one PC to another even with a photo-camera or a portable media player.

• Trojans are the most common threats of today. These are malicious programs incapable of self-replication and usually spread from one machine to another with flash-drives carried by people.

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  Users should only have access to local resources required to perform their tasks at work. It's no use trying to convince the staff that flash drives are dangerous. It is much easier to centrally disable access to such devices. Dr.Web Control Center can do just that.

People who like their jobs work not only in the office but while they commute and also at home. They often sacrifice hours of rest while staying connected. Business willingly takes advantage of such an approach. In many companies people always stay out of office and access the network remotely.

• Up to 70% of infections get into a corporate environment from personal laptops, netbooks, ultrabooks, mobile devices, and removable media (flash drives) often brought from home.
• Around 60% of home computers have no anti-virus protection! So outside their office, people work with devices prone to be compromised by hackers, applications they use may have vulnerabilities and their computers can be infested with viruses and Trojans. And yet these people regularly access the company's network.

It greatly increases the risk of data leaks and its unauthorized modification.

People need to read the news on the Internet and be informed. The danger is that most office staff:

• Browse the internet from their office computers running programs that may have vulnerabilities;
• Perform their tasks under an administrator account in Windows;
• Use weak passwords;
• Do not install security updates for programs they use.

Uncontrolled web-surfing increases the risk of data leakage and of unauthorized data modification.

Sites that are more likely to be sources of malware (in descending order of incident frequency)

1. Sites related technology and telecommunications.
2. Business: business outlets, business news portals, accounting related sites and forums, online courses/lectures, services to improve business efficiency.
3. Adult content websites.

Mail traffic is the main transport for viruses and spam. If malware infects a computer, it can access the employee's address book which along with contacts of other employees may contain addresses of customers and partners - that is, the infection won't be confined to the corporate network but will spread outside.

Carelessness, negligence and ignorance of the simple basics of computer security are often the reasons why computers become a part of botnets, and a source of spam, which damages the company's image, can get it onto a black list and force the provider to disconnect from the Internet for sending out spam.

Vulnerability is a flaw in the software which can be exploited to compromise its integrity, render it non-operational. There are vulnerabilities in every piece of software. There are no invulnerable programs.

Modern virus writers exploit vulnerabilities not only in operating systems but also in applications (browsers, office products, such as Adobe Acrobat Reader and plug-ins for browsers to display flash).

A virus can get to your computer by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability (a vulnerability that is still only known to virus writers or hasn't been closed by the software vendor) or a user may fall for a social engineering trick and launch the virus file and even disable anti-virus's self-defence.

Most modern malware found in the wild can not spread on its own and is meant to be distributed by users.

It is users, ignorant of computer security basics or simply tired or careless, who unintentionally facilitate penetration of malware into a network (use USB devices, open e-mails from unknown senders, surf the web during working hours).

To distribute Trojan horses, virus writers resort to social engineering techniques to take advantage of users, trick them into launching malicious files. Tricks for many: phishing links, false le-mails from banks or social networking site administration and much more. The aim of all social engineering techniques is to acquire personal information ranging from passwords to access various web services to confidential and bank account information.