Malicious software, or malware, is a software program or file that is designed to cause damage or disruption to an IT system, or to help hackers gain access to an IT environment. Attackers use a variety of techniques to install and launch malware on computer systems, including writing malicious code into websites and links, weaponizing email attachments, or loading an executable file onto a USB drive instead of just a hard drive.
Understanding malware
Malware isn’t going anywhere
Malware remains one of the most pervasive and effective cyber threats to IT security. Each year, cybercriminals launch billions of malware attacks on global businesses, and more than 500,000 new pieces of malware are detected every day. From viruses and Trojans to adware and ransomware, malware enables criminals to steal data, money, and intellectual property, hijack computers, spy on computer activity, and damage or disrupt business operations. These attacks can affect Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and other operating systems, including environments that rely on widely used providers and platforms such as Microsoft software.
Combating a malware infection today requires a multilayered approach to cybersecurity. All systems, from the cloud, to an on-prem computer program, to the edge, are part of an organization’s attack surface and are at risk of a malware attack. Any history of malware attacks shows that your defenses must not only attempt to block malware before it lands, but also identify attacks that have already breached defenses, gained unauthorized access, and are moving laterally throughout your IT environment. Your cybersecurity solutions should offer threat intelligence that enables your security teams to automate threat protection with insights into recent malware attacks, phishing attacks, and emerging supply chain-based threats.
Strong security hygiene plays a significant role in reducing the risk of malicious programs from getting access to your device. Measures such as strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, and secure remote access through a virtual private network (VPN) help reduce exposure to credential-based attacks and malicious websites.
Akamai’s robust, flexible platform protects many aspects of your internet-facing infrastructure against a growing range of threats and vulnerabilities. Our security solutions protect your entire ecosystem from cyberattacks without creating lag for your clouds, apps, APIs, and users.
Types of malware
The most common types of malware fall into several categories.
Virus: A virus is a piece of software attached to a document or infected file, which can spread as a computer virus to various systems, like mobile devices, once it is downloaded.
Worm: A worm is malicious software that often self-replicates and spreads to any device within a network, without the need for a host program to disseminate it.
Trojan Horse: Trojan horses often create a backdoor or remote access capability by appearing to be legitimate software programs and execute malicious functions once they have been installed on a system.
Spyware: Spyware is a type of malware that collects sensitive data and information about a user’s computer and activity without their knowledge.
Adware: Adware is malware that tracks a user’s browser history and downloads, allowing advertisers to target advertisements to the user with greater precision. In some cases, adware delivers intrusive pop-up ads that degrade performance and slow down systems. This is different from malvertising, where malicious code is injected through ads to compromise systems.
Keyloggers: A keylogger is a type of malware that tracks everything that a user does on a computer, including keystrokes, web pages opened, emails sent, credentials entered, and even text messages in some mobile environments.
Rootkit: A rootkit is a type of malware that is designed to provide privileged access while hiding its presence from users and security tools.
- Cryptojacking: Cryptojacking is malware that secretly uses an infected system’s processing power to mine cryptocurrency, often causing systems to slow down and increasing infrastructure cost.
- Fileless: Fileless malware operates in memory rather than relying on traditional executable files, making it harder to detect using signature-based tools. These attacks often leverage legitimate system tools, such as scripts or macros, to carry out malicious activity.
Ransomware: most dangerous form of malware
Ransomware is a type of malware that enables cybercriminals to encrypt an organization’s files, documents, and other high-value data, and then demand a ransom (usually in cryptocurrency) from the organization to restore access to the data. This type of malware typically gains an initial foothold through social engineering or scareware attacks like phishing emails and spear-phishing campaigns or by exploiting application vulnerabilities. Once ransomware attacks have landed and infected devices within an IT environment, they move laterally across the network to seek out and encrypt high-value targets. Traditional perimeter firewalls are often ineffective at stopping lateral movement within internal networks.
Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provides a simple, yet powerful way to block ransomware and other adware or spyware attacks from moving laterally within your network, which protects any backups you have or personally identifiable information (PII), like credit card data, separated from the attack. This Akamai solution uses microsegmentation policies to strictly limit communication with digital assets, blocking suspicious and malicious requests that may be part of a malware campaign to keep your systems functioning. Akamai Guardicore Segmentation provides both the real-time and historical visibility required to map application dependencies and flows, which can be used to quickly create AI-powered recommendations for granular segmentation policies that can be implemented in a few clicks.
Comprehensive breach detection capabilities include reputation analysis, dynamic deception, and a threat intelligence firewall. And Akamai Guardicore Segmentation can protect assets in your segmented network no matter where they are deployed, what operating system they are deployed on, or where they are accessed — in the cloud, on-premises, bare metal, virtual servers, or containers.
Stop malware with Akamai security solutions
Combating malware infections with WAAP and SWG
Akamai security solutions provide intelligent, end-to-end protection against malware threats, data breaches, DDoS attacks, and a wide range of additional multi-vector attacks. Akamai helps your security teams to maximize the effectiveness and ROI of your security investments by moving beyond traditional endpoint detection, using a combination of automation and human specialists to learn what your system looks like when it’s not under threat. Then, when your system is under threat, we know exactly how to identify the attack and stop it.
Akamai offers several anti-malware security solutions designed to block malware outside and inside your IT environment.
Secure Internet Access
Secure Internet Access is a secure web gateway (SWG) that proactively protects against zero-day malware and phishing. With no hardware to be installed or maintained, Secure Internet Access is quick to configure and easy to deploy. Multiple layers of malware protection leverage real-time security intelligence and multiple static and dynamic malware-detection engines. These technologies enable you to proactively identify and block targeted threats such as malware, ransomware, phishing scams, and DNS-based data exfiltration of sensitive information. Through the Akamai portal, security teams can centrally create, deploy, and enforce unified security policies as well as acceptable use policies for all users, however they connect to the internet.
App & API Protector
Akamai App & API Protector protects entire web and API estates with a holistic set of powerful protections. This Akamai solution offers customer-focused automation and self-tuning capabilities that empower security teams to do more with less. Multidimensional, adaptive threat-based detections correlate threat intelligence across the Akamai platform, and advanced decision-making logic stops both common and highly targeted attacks on web applications and APIs with incredible precision. App & API Protector has specialized add-on functions to combat botnets, prevent pop-ups that interrupt customer buying journeys, and scan files uploaded through any web application or web browser for malware and block them before they reach your server.
Frequently Asked Questions
Malware protection includes technologies that detect, block, and remediate malicious software across endpoints, networks, applications, and cloud environments.
Why customers choose Akamai
Akamai is the cybersecurity and cloud computing company that powers and protects business online. Our market-leading security solutions, superior threat intelligence, and global operations team provide defense in depth to safeguard enterprise data and applications everywhere. Akamai’s full-stack cloud computing solutions deliver performance and affordability on the world’s most distributed platform. Global enterprises trust Akamai to provide the industry-leading reliability, scale, and expertise they need to grow their business with confidence.
