The Application Whitelist — Why it Matters When it Comes to Modern Threats

Fighting Today’s Cyber Security Threats

As modern cyber security threats continue to advance, keeping your data safe becomes more and more difficult.  Especially for PC users who choose to keep their data secure by using an outdated anti-virus (AV).  The term outdated means two things.  The software may not be updated in regards to patch management.  Or, the AV could be functioning with outdated detection methods.

AV solutions functioning primarily from a blacklist are outdated.  A blacklist is a list of all the known malware.  If a user attempts to execute a file that is known to be malicious, the blacklist will block it.  However, if the file is unknown, meaning it could be bad or it could be good, the blacklist lets it through.  This method is no longer effective.  Malware changes every day, even every minute.  It is impossible for anyone to keep up with all of the known bad files.  Often times, security providers do not know if something is bad until it has already infected someone.  Therefore, there is always a victim.

The Whitelist – Changing PC Protection Options

By using a security solution that functions from a whitelist, the risk of malware infections dramatically decreases.  The whitelist is a list of all known good files.  Therefore, if the user attempts to execute a known bad file it will be blocked because it is not on the whitelist.  More importantly, if they attempt to run an unknown file, it will not execute until it can be tested and deemed safe.  However, this may lead to concerns for some users.  Such as how long do they have to wait for the program or file to be tested.  That depends on their security solution.  PC Matic offers two options:

  1. The user has the ability to locally whitelist the program/file.  If they have used the program and know it is safe, they can bypass the waiting period and add it to their local whitelist.  This will allow for the program/file to be accessible immediately to that specific user.
  2. Unknown files automatically get sent to the PC Matic malware research team — even if the user adds it to their local whitelist.  Within 24 hours, the unknown program/file is tested and deemed either safe or malicious.  If safe, it will be added to PC Matic’s global whitelist.  This means, any PC Matic user who attempts to open that same program/file will be allowed to do so, as it has been deemed safe.

Stop Responding to Threats.
Prevent Them.

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