Malware is a collective term for various malicious software variants and actually is a threat to your system. Malware can be of different types such as Viruses, spyware, Trojans, and ransomware.
Each of these has a different role and affects the system in a different manner. Malware are mostly created by hackers and sold to the highest bidder.
They can damage your system and it can be a long term effect. You can even lose your important files, or they can get corrupt. Malware generally spreads over emails through a link or an executable file. When you unknowingly click on that link or file, the malware takes control over your system. Mobile phones too are not safe from malware attacks.
What can Malware Do?
Malware can attack your system in various ways. The following are different kinds of malware and how they affect our systems.
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- Virus: It is the most common type of malware. Viruses generally spread when an unsuspecting user clicks on a link or an executable file containing them. The file would look similar to a normal or clean file but when you click on it, it can spread quickly like a biological virus affecting the core components of the system, thus the name virus.
- Worms: Worms spread the infection to connected devices via the network. It can infect your entire network rapidly.
- Spyware: Spyware is a type of malware that actually hides in the background to spy on you. It actually notes everything that you do online including your credit card number, passwords, etc.
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- Trojans: This kind of software is hidden in legal software. This malware helps other malware enter your device as it creates backdoors for them.
- Ransomware: The scariest of all malware, ransomware can lock down networks and lock out users of their systems until an amount claimed by the hackers is paid. A number of large organizations have been affected by ransomware since its inception and paying off the hackers is the only way to get back your systems in working conditions.
Effects of a Malware Attack
Malware can affect system performance and in worst-case scenarios, it may lock down a system completely. The general effects of a malware attack are:
- Malware, in most general cases, slows down your system and may result in a system crash as well.
- Once a malware attacks, you will find various error messages on your system frequently.
- Malware can infect your system and can even hijack your browser.
Malware Returning in Systems
Ransomware, as discussed, targets large organizations and it has been seen that many organizations got hit a second time with the same malware. And with ransomware gaining momentum among hackers, such attacks are on the rise.
Undoubtedly, the companies are in the best position to save themselves from ransomware. They can deploy the latest security measures to avoid an attack. And, after a first attack, they generally do that as well. They tighten the security where it was lagging. However, there can be many doors to a room and hackers know that well. They find an alternative to entering your system. Finding loopholes in system security is what they do and though it’s a mighty task, organizations too should do this and tighten the security even further.
Speaking of a return attack, these may happen due to other reasons as well. If the malware came in the form of a Trojan, it’s possible that it got into a company back up and when the backup was unrolled, the system got affected a second time, by the same malware.
Is a Malware Return Attack Even Possible?
In short, the answer is Yes. German software firm GData stated that a new type of malware gets released every 3.2 seconds. And with so many variants of malware, antimalware, antivirus or other security measures like firewalls are not always apt in preventing an attack.
So, the chances of malware entering a company backup are rather high. And when the company chooses to use this backup, the system gets infected a second time.
With the rise in the amount of data handled by organizations, it’s a general rule to back up everything for avoiding data loss. But, if the backup itself is infected, it’s a rather scary situation then.
To avoid such cases, organizations need to boost up their security measures and run scans on their backup files as well. They can use different top security software to run these scans on the backups. Because, being a backup, running scans on them will not affect the system performance.
Most of the organizations depend on their backup blindly. They believe that it is a foolproof method against the various malware attacks. But for that, they need to re-check their backups and make sure they are free from virus or any other threats.
