Tired of Updating All of Your Antivirus Solutions One-By-One? Here’s a Better Way!

One of the great advantages of the Internet is the connectivity that it offers the world, which allows communications and business transactions to take place almost instantaneously. Yet this connectivity comes at a price as cybercriminals can also use this connectivity to interfere with businesses much more easily and effectively. As a matter of good business practice, it is necessary to have protections put in place to defend your systems against an external threat. One such measure your business needs is a solid antivirus solution.

How you implement your antivirus solution is important as well. Ordinarily, the program would be installed on each machine individually, but this leads to further concerns in a business environment. With each employee linked to your network, what would happen if one of them neglected to update their solution in a timely fashion and as a result exposed your entire system to a particularly nasty variety of malware? This is before you even consider some of the other problems that a disconnected antivirus solution could present for a business.

These issues are exactly why a centralized antivirus solution is the superior option for a business to implement. Rather than maintaining a solution on each workstation (more on that shortly), the solution is maintained on the network that serves those workstations, providing a wide variety of benefits to a business.

Full Control Over Security Measures
Returning to the scenario where an employee neglects to update their solution and allows the infiltration of company systems, let’s take a moment to consider why an employee would do such a thing. Perhaps they were in a particular hurry to start on their day’s full schedule, or maybe they saw the notification and resolved to update it later and never got around to it. Regardless of whatever reason they had, the damage is done the moment they close the task window.

A centralized antivirus solution takes that opportunity out of the equation. By implementing updates and similar processes via the shared system network, all employee workstations will receive the same updates, without IT interrupting their day one by one.

Decrease the Loss of Productivity
Another benefit to this approach is that, because IT no longer needs to interrupt each employee individually to install their antivirus solutions, the amount of productivity lost during these times is decreased significantly. A typical implementation could involve committing one or more members of an in-house IT team to interrupting your other employees from their work in order to install an update. This approach not only keeps the IT team member from progressing along on their other tasks, but also prevents the employee receiving the update from being productive. As a result, you have a potential distraction to your other employees as well, as your displaced employee probably won’t be inclined to wait there in silence.

Now repeat this scenario for however many workstations need the updated antivirus. If a business utilized a centralized solution, this wouldn't have to be a problem, as their entire network could be updated simultaneously, saving time for all involved.

Reduced Time and Costs
Finally, consider how much potential revenue is ultimately lost after adding up all the lost productivity from each employee, each and every time a change is made to the antivirus solution you’ve implemented. A centralized solution, if implemented properly, reduces that total considerably. You may even be able to find a reputable antivirus solution for free, although that’s a job for SCW to handle, as many free “solutions” online can leave your defenses less able to protect you, or worse, are forms of malware themselves.

SCW has the knowledge and resources to assist you in establishing the most successful IT implementations possible. To learn more, reach out to us at (509) 534-1530.