Malware is a growing problem showing no signs of slowing down. Cyberattacks on organizations have been occurring for years now, but it is no longer just the organizations that are under attack. There have recently been incidents where malware has been spread through social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Over the past few months more and more Twitter and Facebook accounts were created with the sole purpose of spreading download links to different forms of malware. If IT Security professionals are finding it difficult to respond effectively to these attacks how is the average person going to keep their computer (and personal data on it)  safe?

There are plenty of big name anti-virus software applications available to you. But will they protect you from malware? Yes and no. While such programs can detect when a virus has been discovered on your machine, they often fail to eliminate that virus. In fact, these anti-virus programs are forced to quarantine most advanced forms of malware because they have yet to find ways to delete them. Additionally, it is common that even the top anti-virus programs won’t detect the newest malware until after it has already been on your machine for at least 45 hours – almost 2 days according to a study done by NSS Labs which you can read about here.

So what’s the solution? A start would be preventing malware from ever getting on to your computer in the first place – and that’s just what Cocoon does for you

Cocoon is an add-on to Firefox that protects you without changing your browsing experience. Once you’ve logged in, Cocoon acts as a filter between you and the internet by taking the content it receives from the internet and translating it into a virus free format before sending it to your computer. What this means is that the internet doesn’t interact with the user’s computer, it interacts with Cocoon’s servers instead. This is an advantage that other anti-virus software does not offer; preventing malware from getting on to your computer in the first place rather than scanning your computer regularly and trying to eliminate malware once it has already invaded your machine.

You can read more about this software and even download a free beta at www.getCocoon.com

To read more about cyberattacks on organizations refer to the following link:

http://www.infosecurity-us.com/view/10652/organizations-in-the-dark-about-advanced-cyberattacks/

To read more about the presence of Malware on social networking sites refer to the following links:

http://blog.trendmicro.com/backdoors-in-twitter-now-in-arabic/