Benefits of a Website Malware Scanner

Malicious code/ software can wreak havoc for the business, from account takeover and database tampering to stealing data and causing other forms of cyberattacks. A website malware scanner enables organizations to proactively address the challenge of malware. Through the intelligent scanning of sites for malware, you can detect and remove malware before anything catastrophic happens.

Read on to know more about website malware scanners and their benefits.

Website Malware Scanners: An Introduction

Malware 

Malware or malicious software is a malicious program/ piece of code designed to wreak havoc on any programmable devices, systems, networks, or websites. They typically exploit vulnerabilities in the systems/ websites/ networks to get into the system.

For instance, in phishing attacks, the vulnerabilities exploited are the human users. The attackers coax/ pressure legitimate users into downloading malicious attachments, visiting fake websites, or clicking on links, thereby, infecting their system.

What are Website Malware Scanners? 

Website malware scanners are tools that scan sites for malware including spyware, ransomware, viruses, Trojan horse, worms, adware, botnets, cryptocurrency miners, and other types. It looks for and reports infected files, malicious codes, defacements, hidden iframes, external files, vulnerability exploits, suspicious activities, and blacklisting status.

How Does it Work?

An intelligent malware scanner like Indusface WAS leverages multiple methods and approaches to analyze the website content, detect malware, flag suspicious activities, and notify you to immediately remediate issues. They use a combination of signature analysis, heuristic analysis, threat intelligence, behavior analysis, etc. to scan sites for malware.

The web malware scanners continuously monitor the website for blacklisting by popular search engines and other platforms. They offer real-time alerts to help you ensure that your website is not blacklisted and that it is always available to legitimate users.

An intelligent malicious website checker offers external URL blacklisting checks. This enables you to prevent your customers from visiting infected websites that may cause your website to get infected by malware.

Why is Website Malware Scanning Needed? 

Here are some alarming statistics that will give you an insight into how pervasive and dangerous malware is.

• Email malware attacks rose by 600% in 2020 when compared to 2019. 
• In 2021, 74% of organizations face employee-to-employee malware spread owing to infected employee devices.
• As of October 10, 2021, Google Safe Browsing issued 5,070, 842 weekly in-browser/ in-app warnings, a vast majority of which were phishing and/or malware-infected websites.
• 2020 saw a massive 5.6 billion malware attacks (despite being 43% from the 2019 figures).
• IoT malware saw a whopping 66% increase while ransomware saw a 62% hike in 2020.
• The cost of malware attacks which is a combination of remediation costs, legal charges, penalties, fines, cost of customer attrition, financial and reputational damage, is over USD 2.5 million.

It is also important to note that most malware, except ransomware, are extremely stealthy. You may not even know that your website has been infected or is running malware since it may be hidden in places like the website’s source code.

The best way to avoid these mammoth costs is to proactively detect and remove malware using an intelligent malware scanner.

Benefits of Web Malware Scanner 

Infuse Proactiveness 

Website malware scanners thoroughly analyze the website for malware using multiple approaches and methods to identify malware including suspicious activities. This way, you gain a massive advantage in removing the malware proactively and keeping your website safe. When the scanner is part of a larger security solution that includes a Web App Firewall and services of certified security experts, you can automatically remediate even advanced issues.

Increase Visitor Trust 

Websites that run malware are blacklisted by all major browsers. Users get warnings to indicate that the website is infected/ suspicious. So, your website will become unavailable to legitimate users until you take steps to remediate the issues, and your users will go to competitor websites.

Further, it brings down your search engine rankings and in the worst case, your website could be delisted completely. You lose not just money but customer trust and brand reputation. With malware scanning and the trust seal offered by leading security service providers, you can increase visitor trust.

Protect Databases from Injection Attacks

When the malware scanning tool is part of a robust vulnerability scanner, you will not only identify malware but vulnerabilities that could allow its injection and/or spread on the website. This way, you can prevent the databases from injection attacks.

Visibility into Website Changes 

Web malware scanners offer you full visibility into any changes that may have been done to the website. For instance, file changes, FTP, databases, defacements, etc. This way, you can continuously monitor the website and protect it.

The Bottomline

Malware is one of the biggest cybersecurity problems facing organizations today with increasingly sophisticated malware attacks. Given this context, website malware scanners are a must for all kinds of websites and organizations.

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