Network security is essential both in the business world as well as in the case of home networks. There are many common mistakes people make that could have serious consequences. Some of the mistakes include not using the most current patches or patching only when needed, or not patching the correct level of malware. To identify these mistakes you need to examine the system by looking for any malicious activity. The malicious activity can be on the network, in the files, or even on internal network machines, and that’s why protecting your network is essential and you can get a cloud access protocol for this in sites such as https://www.fortinet.com/products/cloud-access-security-broker online.
You can also identify malicious activity based on the files located on the machine and you can see if there are other files in the path that are also encrypted. Any files are listed in the C:WindowsApp Path folder and looking for specific paths that could contain an attack vector or scripts to execute on your network, and you can even examine the contents of these directories to see if any malicious code is present.
Once you have found malicious files, and identified them, you can use a variety of anti-virus products to scan them for malicious code. Some will identify all files in the path and scan them on the network, others will only scan a single folder, some will find files on the network that match the patterns and scan them, and others will only scan the files on the network. To scan an entire path of files you would do the following:
Select the Security tab in your firewall or anti-virus. Select Computer from the list of drop down menu. Right click on the computer and select Properties. On the Local Security Policy screen you can see the Security Settings screen, from here you can choose to Allow Local File Inclusion and Exclusion Policies. Select the Allow All option. Type a directory path to a file that is found by your anti-virus and select Allow All. Click Apply. The directories you have selected will be marked with an X, and the resulting paths will be marked with an X/Y.
Here are some examples of what this screen should look like:
Other Tools for Malicious Network Activity
To automate this activity you can use free tools like File Inspector or Antivirus with Anti-Malware Agent, respectively.
While both of these solutions will scan your system for malicious files, File Inspector will use the scan results to determine what files are open on the system and how many can be properly removed. Antivirus with Anti-Malware Agent will allow you to pick what files you want to scan for, can provide additional information about the files found, and will provide a summary of the files and folders found.
If you need to speed up the scanning process, both these tools will use a scanning service to run the scan, however the time it takes to scan is usually more than File Inspector’s.NET script can do, so be sure to scan properly. To speed things up you can use the option to use the script, that will start scanning the system in a short amount of time and start immediately without having to wait for an update.
Last but not least, if you need help to quickly identify malicious files, don’t worry, you don’t have to look a gift horse in the mouth. Luckily there are a number of free tools available that will help you quickly see if anything is wrong on your network.
Hopefully this tool will help you to find malicious activity on your network and identify potential threats. Thanks for reading and let me know if you find anything useful!