CompTIA A+ Certification All-in-One Exam Guide

possible, add an appliance that runs anti-malware programs against incoming
data from your network. Also remember that an anti-malware program is
only as good as its updates—keep everyone’s definition file (explained a bit
later) up to date with, literally, nightly updates! Users must be trained to look
for suspicious ads, programs, and pop-ups, and understand that they must not
click these things. The more you teach users about malware, the more aware
they’ll be of potential threats. Your organization should have policies and
procedures in place so everyone knows what to do if they encounter malware.
Finally, a good tech maintains proper incident response records to see if any
pattern to attacks emerges. He or she can then adjust policies and procedures
to mitigate these attacks.
EXAM TIP One of the most important malware mitigation procedures is to
keep systems under your control patched and up to date through proper patch
management. Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux maintainers do a very good
job of putting out bug fixes and patches as soon as problems occur. If your
systems aren’t set up to update automatically, then perform manual updates
regularly.
Anti-Malware Programs
An anti-malware program such as a classic antivirus program protects your
PC in two ways. It can be both sword and shield, working in an active seekand-destroy
mode and in a passive sentry mode. When ordered to seek and
destroy, the program scans the computer’s boot sector and files for viruses
and, if it finds any, presents you with the available options for removing or
disabling them. Antivirus programs can also operate as virus shields that
passively monitor a computer’s activity, checking for viruses only when
certain events occur, such as a program execution or file download.