ESET eradicates virus in enterprise environment

When an award-winning corporate travel management company in South Africa (hereon referred to as the Client), fell victim to an untargeted malware attack, the company quickly turned to AVeS as its preferred anti-virus technology partner to neutralise the threat.

Due to its existing Service Level Agreement (SLA) with AVeS, the technology consultancy was able to quickly respond to the Client’s concern. After an urgent telephone call from the Client’s IT manager to AVeS’s Managing Director, AVeS placed dedicated technical resources on-site within 2 hours to assess the extent and source of the malware attack. “Because we were already familiar with the environment’s architecture, we could immediately assist the client by getting to the root cause of the outbreak“, said Charl Ueckermann, Managing Director of AVeS.

After AVeS identified the source of entry into the network, the Client decided to replace its then used antivirus product with a product that could reduce the company’s risks of such threats re-entering the network. The change in antivirus products also allowed the Client to revisit previous requirements they had of antivirus capabilities and user experience. The Client requested that the new antivirus also run lightly on computer resources to minimise impact on user productivity, enable end users to more easily understand and work within the safety parametres of the network, and protect devices linked to the network without having to rely on updated signature databases.

With the technical and user specifications clarified, ESET’s IT Security Enterprise Edition was chosen based in its light-run client, central management console and built-in Data Access Protection to secure mobile devices within the organisation.

The Client requested a wall-to-wall, site-to-site manual uninstallation of the previous antivirus products and clean installation of ESET to ensure that each machine was cleaned of any malware infections, if found. This meant that AVeS had to temporarily retain the previous antivirus solution, as well as block autoruns with GPO, to proactively ensure that the network was not exposed to other malware attacks during the migration process as a best practice approach.

An ESET management console was installed in the Client’s data centre with cloud capabilities. The ERA server was followed by an ERA console. Licences were activated for all the machines, computer updates processed and best practice-policies setup in a like-for-like fashion from the previous antivirus product. ESET agents were created and verified for the Client’s head office, data centre and office branches nationwide. With AVeS and ESET’s assistance, the Client then continued the wall-to-wall installation process of all 750 machines nationwide.

“Since we moved to ESET, our network security has its regained stability“, says Clinton Williams, IT Manager of the Client. “ESET meets all our business requirements, it was well implemented by the AVeS guys in less than a week and until today, we are happy with the product”, continues Williams.

Main lesson learned

For end users:

Always scan USB devices before using them on a company issued computer, even if the origin or use of the USB device is known.

For IT managers:

Setup security scanning policies based on poke-yoke principles that protect your network against malware outbreaks.