Install laptop security tracking software. This software sends a heartbeat back to the organization or a managed security service when a lost or stolen laptop connects to the Internet. The laptop data can then be remotely erased and its physical location possibly even tracked.

. Anti-Virus Protection

Long gone are those days when computer viruses did little more than frustrating users by rearranging their desktop icons or rolling an annoying ambulance across their monitor screen. Viruses today are more prolific, destructive, and sophisticated than ever before. Malware (including viruses) is designed to steal information and provide back door access to systems.

Anti-virus software’s are as important as ever in providing comprehensive security for endpoints. Anti-virus protection includes signature based and heuristics based software. Signature based anti-virus software is the most common anti-virus software in use today. Antivirus signature files are developed by security vendors to detect and prevent known virus threats and are typically downloaded to servers and individual systems automatically on a predetermined
schedule, perhaps daily or as often as every 15 minutes. Signature based anti-virus software is effective, but largely reactive, in its approach.

. Some limitations of signature based anti-virus software include—

. As the number of viruses, worms, and Trojans as grown rapidly over the years (now more than one million), so too has the size of signature flies. This is storage space, and processor/memory utilization.

. Because signatures are developed for known threats, there is usually a lag when new threats, known as zero-day or zero-hour threats, emerge. This lag (several hours or days) exists because a new threat that is ‘released into the world’ must first be detected and studied. Then a solution must be developed, tested, distributed, installed, and executed.
Heuristics based anti-virus software uses more proactive approach than signature based anti-virus software to detect and prevent computer viruses. Heuristics based software monitors normal operating system and application behavior to determine whether unusual activity or anomalous behavior that may possibly be associated with a virus occurs, then prevents its execution. For example, launching Notepad in Windows should normally open a stealth connection to the internet and transfer files to a server located in Nigeria. This could be a strong indication of a virus or other malware, which a Heuristics-based anti-virus solution would prevent from executing.

. Heuristics based software analyzes the behavior of code at two stages—

. Pre-execution: Behavior of code is analyzed before it runs and is prevented from running if it is considered to be suspicious or malicious.

. Runtime: Intercepts threats that cannot be detected before execution.
Many anti-virus solutions today incorporate both Signature based and Heuristics based strategies to protect against known and emerging virus threats. In addition to anti-virus protection, a comprehensive endpoint security solution should protect against spyware, adware, Trojans, and rootkits. These threats are often unwittingly installed on endpoints through unauthorized applications, which we discuss in the next session.

. Application Control
Application Control software blocks or restricts the use of unauthorized applications that may adversely impact network performance, user productivity, or system security, such as instant messaging (IM), peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, Internet games, VoIP clients, and other potentially unwanted applications (PUAs). Such applications may be used to intentionally or accidentally leak data.