The Internet is up to its ears with threats and hackers, but some of the most annoying malicious entities are bots. These are systems which can gather information from all kinds of sources. While some aren’t malicious in nature (think SEO bots which gather data from websites), there are those that aren’t so innocent. These tend to fall into the hands of hackers and attempt to steal information or send spam.

When a bot is infected with malware, it is enslaved by a hacker and is forced to do its will. Think of it like an insatiable zombie-bot, which wants to do nothing but spread its infection to others around it. This, in turn, creates more bots, and these systems bond together into a botnet. These entities can mask their presence and creep into your system disguised as everyday Internet traffic. It can then proceed to collect as much information as it needs to spam you into next year, or steal your company’s data. Botnets are also notorious for executing distributed denial of service attacks, where the bots continuously ping the server and overload it with traffic. This prevents users from accessing the server and bringing any further movement to a halt.

Regardless of the function performed by these bots, they should be taken seriously. Every business owner must be aware of what bots are capable of. Thankfully, there are well-known industry standards for helping you power up your botnet defense strategy.

Start with Prevention
As is the case with any issue, if you can prevent it from happening in the first place, you’re golden. The same can be said about botnets. You want to take measures to protect your business’s network and its systems from becoming infected and turning to the dark side. An antivirus solution can destroy threats before they do too much damage, but it’s not a complete fix to the issue at hand. You want to keep the threats out in the first place, and Network Synergy’s comprehensive security tool can do just that. We call it the Unified Threat Management solution, which includes a firewall, antivirus, web content filtering, and spam blocking. It’s designed to keep all manners of threats from getting in and wreaking havoc on your company’s network.

Identify the Threats
Preventing threats from accessing your system only helps if they haven’t already gotten in. Therefore, you need to take measures to protect your network from those who might try to compromise it. If there’s infected systems in your network, they might give off unusual network traffic patterns. By following these patterns, you can figure out which systems need to be cleaned up. Network Synergy can accomplish this with our remote monitoring tools. This allows for the detection of abnormalities in your network’s traffic, and can end the wild goose chase for infected systems.

Resolve the Issue
Once you’ve figured out which systems are infected, the hard part is over. Now you need to give them a good wiping to ensure that your systems are no longer compromised. First, physically remove the system from the network (i.e. quarantine that bad boy). Then, attempt to clean the system of any infections it might have. Unfortunately, some infections run too deep, so you might have to simply restore the system from its last clean backup.

Botnets are a very real threat and you can never be too careful. Network Synergy can equip your business with the tools necessary to diagnose botnet infections and eliminate them from your system. Give us a call at (203) 261-2201 to keep the infections at bay.