90% of companies have knowingly or unknowingly fallen victim to cyberattacks. Often, the effects of such attacks only become apparent years later, with hackers stealing data or infiltrating IT systems over time. Appropriate technical measures are needed to ensure system integrity and minimize the risk of a cyberattack. The use of antivirus software is part of the basic toolkit. Antivirus software protects PCs, servers, or mobile devices from malware. It relies on signature-based detection to identify known threats. The software uses a database of signatures containing patterns or code snippets from known viruses, trojans, or malware variants. It scans files or entire systems for these known signatures and takes appropriate action when a match is found in the database.

 

The threat landscape in cyberspace is constantly evolving. To illustrate this: every day, 250,000 new malware variants emerge in Germany alone. This clearly shows that simple antivirus software quickly reaches its limits, especially when relying solely on outdated databases. This is often the case with free products.

 

However, traditional antivirus software is now an insufficient shield and is often powerless against zero-day vulnerabilities or polymorphic viruses, whose code is automatically altered using AI to evade signature-based detection methods.

 

Users should ensure that the antivirus software they choose includes heuristic analysis. Heuristic analysis examines the behavior of files and programs, recognizing suspicious activities. For example, no program should encrypt large quantities of files when executed. If such behavior is detected, the program is flagged as suspicious, even if no known signature is found in the database.

 

Time is the critical factor that determines the extent of damage in the event of a cyberattack. Ideally, a security incident should be detected, analyzed, and fully resolved within an hour. Here it becomes clear that standard antivirus software already reaches its limits, as it often only scans the endpoint for threats once a day.

 

EDR – Endpoint Detection and Response – goes a step further. EDR is an advanced form of traditional antivirus software that continuously and proactively monitors and analyzes all endpoint activities in real-time.

 

With the help of machine learning, EDR can detect unknown viruses and malware. It can identify unusual network activities or abnormal user interactions.

 

A security incident can only be considered resolved when all fragments of the cyberattack have been removed from the systems. 

 

An integrated flight recorder, found in many EDR solutions, provides comprehensive and detailed records of all activities and can be used for forensic analysis, such as determining how the attacker entered the system or whether the system is truly 100% clean. Additionally, EDR solutions can isolate suspicious endpoints to prevent malware from spreading from a client PC to the entire network.

 

Compared to standard antivirus software, EDR solutions offer the ability to roll back changes, allowing data encrypted, deleted, or altered by a ransomware attack to be restored. This ensures that a recovery is possible even if the backup was encrypted or deleted. Another effective and additional protective mechanism is the cloud sandboxing feature integrated into Endpoint Detection and Response software. These sandboxes analyze and assess suspicious objects in an isolated and secure environment, enabling the detection and neutralization of complex and unknown cyber threats before they reach the PC or server.