Cybersecurity aims to protect systems, networks, programs, data, and devices from cyberattacks. Such attacks usually strive to access, change, hold hostage, or destroy sensitive information, be it personal or business.
A successful breach can lead to extortion, data loss, and interruption of business processes.
A complete cybersecurity software could significantly reduce the risk of data breaches via the sensible application of technologies, controls, and processes within your network.
Implementing stellar cybersecurity practices is challenging nowadays, but robust defense systems evolve alongside sophisticated malicious attacks. Staying up-to-date with crucial defense tactics takes time and effort, but it is entirely possible.
To give you a head start, we’ve compiled a list of the best cybersecurity software features. But first, let’s see some statistics on cybercrime in 2024!
- Google reports 2,145,013 phishing sites as of January 17th, 2024. This is a 27% increase compared to the 1,690,000 malicious pages registered on January 19th, 2024.
- The volume of internet-connected devices is expected to grow from 31 billion in 2024 to 35 billion in 2024. The expected count for 2025 is a staggering 75 billion.
- The U.S. government’s allocated cybersecurity budget for 2024 is estimated at $18.78 billion.
- Statistics show a 350% growth in open cybersecurity positions from 2013 to 2024.
- In 2024, experts predict a cyberattack will occur every 11 seconds. This is twice the expected rate of 2019.
List of Vital Cybersecurity Software Features
According to Acronis, a reliable cybersecurity platform is both the front and last line of defense against cyber threats.
Choosing the right one for your personal or business network requires thorough research, but good cyber protection software should shine in all of the following:
Patch Management
Patch management is the process of managing single device or network patching to keep all software up-to-date against security threats.
As with most modern security processes, you can automate patching. You can have your security software take care of missing patches identification, patch deployment, and endpoint weak links detection.
Streamlining the whole process reduces the risk of system-related failures, optimizes patching costs, and improves productivity.
Sensible practices here ensure your systems’ security and efficiency.
- Regular software and OS updates deny the risks of security breaches.
- Automated “ASAP” patching leaves less space for cybercriminals to exploit unpatched and possibly vulnerable systems.
- Manual patching takes time and can also lead to human error, resulting in exposed endpoints. Automating the process enables your IT specialists to focus on business-critical tasks instead.
Endpoint Protection
Endpoint protection (or “endpoint security”) is a must for reliable cybersecurity software.
It is the practice of securing all possible endpoints (or “entry points”) of end-user devices – desktops, mobile devices, and laptops – from being exploited by malicious attacks.
Securing endpoints occurs both on your network and on the cloud to provide comprehensive protection from evolving malware and sophisticated zero-day threats.
As cyber threats become more advanced, businesses and individuals should rely only on the most comprehensive endpoint security solutions. Such solutions usually use:
- Machine-learning classification to detect and negate zero-day threats. (in real-time)
- Robust antimalware and antivirus software to detect, correct, and protect malware across numerous endpoint devices and OSs.
- Proactive web security protocols to ensure secure browsing on the web.
- Pre-patch backups to avoid flawed system patch errors. Even if a patch conflicts with a system, you can initiate a backup to a working and secured version.
- Endpoint, disk, and email encryption to minimize the risk of data breaches and exfiltration.
Backup and Disaster Recovery
There’s a crucial distinction between backup and disaster recovery.
Backup involves making copies of your data and storing them on an off-site server or the cloud to protect it. You can restore your data in the case of accidental deletion, software upgrade problems, or database corruption.
On the other hand, disaster recovery aims to plan the processes to reestablish access to data, apps, and IT resources after an outage or a successful DDoS attack as quickly as possible.
As backup serves a more “casual” function, meaning it can be initiated as a sensible security practice, we will emphasize disaster recovery’s critical terms.
Disaster recovery relies on the robustness of the following:
- Recovery time objective (or “RTO) marks the amount of time you need to recover regular business operations in the event of an outage. The less time you spend getting your systems back up, the less you will lose in terms of productivity and revenue.
- Recovery point objective (or “RPO) refers to the maximum amount of data you can afford to lose to a disaster or a massive cyberattack.
- Failover ensures automatic tasks offloading to backup systems in a seamless way for users.
- Failback is responsible for switching back to your original systems once your primary data center is back up and running.
- Restore monitors the data backup transfer from secure storage to your primary data system or center.
Antimalware Protection
In the best-case scenario, antimalware protection secures your data and systems through multi-layered AI-, signature-, and behavior-based detection and protection. It aims to negate known and newly developed malware, viruses, ransomware, and file-less attacks.
Robust antimalware comprises:
- On-demand antivirus scans
- Web filtering to block malicious URLs and crypto-jacking
- Smart alerts
- Videoconference protection
- Behavioral malware identification
Data Protection
Data protection means taking all needed steps to secure the entirety of your data.
The process includes active disc cloning to migrate all data to a secure server or the cloud, cloud restores to ensure you can access your data safely, and event-based backups to automatically back up data in the case of a disaster or a dedicated cyberattack.
Here are some of the cornerstones in reliable data protection.
- Full image backups
- File and folder backups
- Real-time protection
- Anti-ransomware and crypto-jacking protection
- CPU load balancing
Server Management
Server security management is crucial to keep all of your operational data safe from cyber threats.
It is essential to rely on advanced server security protocols to meet your data, legal, and compliance commitments. Such protocols include:
- 24/7 monitoring and intrusion detection.
- Monitoring network traffic to detect malicious activities.
- Managing network security appliances.
- Administering high-end firewalls.
- Blocking traffic from potentially malicious IP addresses.
