Upgrading our Minimum Cyber Defence Level 

Over the past few years there has been a major shift in the cyber security threats that people and businesses are facing on a daily basis, in the UK alone Businesses have faced 2.39 Million Cyber Attacks over the past 12 months, which is the equivalent of 4.55 Cyber Attacks every minute, and Ransomware Attacks have nearly doubled from 2022-2023. As part of our commitment to providing best-in-class services and solutions to businesses, we have made the decision to increase our minimum Cyber Defence level to ensure that all businesses are protected against these latest threats.

There was once a time when having an Anti-Virus solution for your business devices was considered a suitable method to protect your business from potential threats. However, traditional Signature Based Anti-Virus is now only considered to be 30%-50% effective against the latest Cyber Security threats, Cyber Threat actors are using new and evolving tools such as AI, Machine Learning and Large Language Models to be able to easily adapt existing malware to be able to avoid detection through Traditional Signature Based Anti-Virus. As such, Signature Based Anti-Virus is no longer considered a trusted method of protecting your business from the ever-growing cyber threats that businesses around the world face on a daily basis.  

Explained: Signature-Based Anti-Virus & its Disadvantages

Traditional Signature Based Anti-Virus looks for unique identifiers, or “signatures”, of viruses/malware from a database of known signatures. If a match to a known virus signature is found, the anti-virus software is able to identify the code or file as malicious and then take action to block or remove it from an endpoint such as a Computer or Server.

Because Signature Based Ant-Virus can only protect against these “known” threats, if a cyber threat actor creates a new virus or alters an existing virus to avoid detection it means that your endpoints are still vulnerable to these threats. Using AI, threat actors can create thousands of variations of a single virus to be able to avoid detection by traditional methods, leading to more than 560,000 new cyber threats being discovered daily. Similarly, if a new vulnerability is detected in a Software or Operating System (known as “Zero Day Threats”) it means that this could be vulnerable to attack by threat actors until the vulnerability is patched through an update, or until cyber security experts can create protection to known viruses targeting these vulnerabilities. Because of this, Signature-Based Anti-Virus requires regular updates from a central database of known malware signatures or it will not be as effective in blocking the latest threats, meaning that the anti-virus requires regular or constant connection to the internet. Because Signature Based Anti-Virus can not distinguish between safe or malicious code, only if a signature is on a list in a database, often Anti-Virus is also known for generating false positive alerts as signatures can be falsely logged as malicious or can simulate the same signature as legitimate software.

With the rise in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Large Language Models it is becoming easier than ever for malicious threat actors to avoid signature-based anti-virus. It has been estimated that anti-virus can only protect against 30%-50% of the latest cyber threats in the world, meaning that at any given time your business could be exposed to up to 70% of threats that could target you on a daily basis. 

How can your business stay protected from the latest Cyber Security threats?

As Cyber Threat Actors evolve with the latest technology available to them, Cyber Defence must also evolve. Endpoint Detection & Response, also known as EDR, is the next level of Cyber Threat Protection. Unlike Traditional Signature Based Anti-Virus, Endpoint Detection & Response uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to monitor your endpoints for Unusual, Suspicious or Malicious behaviour to be able to stop it in its tracks.  

For example;

A user in your business downloads what they believe is a legitimate PDF from an email. However, this file contains a new piece of malware that has been developed in an attempt to infect your devices, steal your data and encrypt your files. 

Anti-Virus: As this is a new piece of malware that has not yet been detected by Anti-Virus there is no protection against this threat and the malware easily infects your devices, potentially wreaking havoc on your business. 

Endpoint Detection & Response: EDR uses Machine Learning to see that this file is attempting to perform actions on your device that appear suspicious, blocks these actions and deletes the file. Along with this EDR is able to generate detailed information about these potential threats, allowing the relevant personnel (Such as our Cyber Security Operations Centre/SOC) to understand the threat that has been posed to the business, the nature of the attack and allow them to take the necessary actions to contain and prevent the attack on other devices.  

How can TwentyFour IT provide best-in-class Cyber Security protection?

TwentyFour go above and beyond standard Endpoint Detection & Response solutions offered by most IT Support & Managed Service Providers, our Managed Endpoint Detection & Response can also be paired with our own dedicated Security Operations Centre (SOC). This Complete Managed Cyber Security solution is like having your own dedicated 24/7 Cyber Security team protecting your business all year round. Our EDR & SOC service proactively monitors and protects against all potential threats, monitoring evolving threats within the industry and ensuring that all of your endpoints are continuously protected. 

Often advanced threat actors can infect, gain control of and sit inside a business's endpoints for weeks (or months) at a time, monitoring activity, identifying further methods of attack, and accessing more systems, in an effort to cause as much damage as possible. Our Security Operations Centre correlates all of the data provided by our Endpoint Detection & Response and SIEM solution, as well as data from other industry-leading Cyber Defence tools, allowing them to respond to incidents in a fast and efficient manner, whilst also providing Advanced Threat Hunting solutions to search for, identify and isolate threats that may be lurking in the shadows of your endpoints and providing extensive reporting solutions about attack mitigation and remediation. 

With TwentyFour, Cyber Protection goes beyond Detection. Your business can have the peace of mind of knowing that 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, your devices are being monitored for, and protected against, the latest Cyber Security Threats.

Our existing customers have already been informed about this change which will see Cyber Defence levels increasing from November 1st. However, if you would like to find out more about our Managed Endpoint Detection & Response Solution & how TwentyFour can protect your business from the latest Cyber Threats, take our Cyber Security Health Check by completing the form below.