Infographic: Is Your Computer a Zombie?

It's a dark and gloomy day here at OPSWAT's San Francisco headquarters. #BayAreaStorm is trending on Twitter, infrastructure delays may impact our ability to get home tonight, and, worst of all, most of our staff is suffering from serious The Walking Dead withdrawals. After that mid-season finale, we cannot wait for the show to return in February. Now, some of you may be wondering what zombies have to do with securing and managing IT infrastructure. Well, it turns out that botnet attacks are creating hordes of cyber-zombies that cause serious damage!

In OPSWAT's inaugural infographic, we explore the similarities between a botnet infection and the spread of zombiism, and provide a toolkit to keep your computer safe in this post-apocalyptic landscape.

Toolkit to Survive Botnet Attacks:

1. Check Before You Click
   Use an IP reputation scanner to check suspicious links before clicking.

2. Scan Downloads
   Scan all downloads for malware, including zero-day attacks and Trojans, with a multi-scanning browser plugin for Firefox or Chrome.

3. Update Software
   Keep your browser, operating system and other software up to date. Many attacks exploit security holes that were identified and patched long ago, but if you don't update your software regularly you could still be at risk!

4. Increase Defenses
   Small business owners should consider enterprise-level solutions to protect their mail servers. Try Policy Patrol 10 or the free IP scanning tool for Exchange created by the Metascan Online community.

5. Strengthen Passwords
   Many of these exploits rely on weak passwords, so always choose secure passwords, especially for web hosting accounts and sensitive data!

6. Check for Symptoms
   Periodically scan open network connections for known command and control servers. The Firefox plugin mentioned above is a great tool for this!

7. Stop Phishing and Spam
   Phishing emails may try to fool you into providing credentials or information to a botnet. Never submit your information this way! Policy Patrol 10 is free for up to ten users to stop spam and phishing.

8. Enable Click-to-Play
   Many drive-by infections are spread using Flash auto-play, so make sure you have click-to-plan enabled in your browser of choice.

Please include a link to this post when you share our infographic.

For more information, please contact one of our cybersecurity experts.