False Positive in Cyber Security
What is a false positive in cyber security? False positives refer to the state that your security system mistakenly identifies some actions or files and other objects as potential dangers.
However, actually, the detected signs are not just caused by malware or viruses but also other factors, such as temporary antivirus bugs, outdated threat signatures, misconfigured security settings, or inherent limitations in the detection algorithms.
False positives can happen on a scanning tool, web application firewall (WAF), intrusion prevention system, etc. These tools will scan your system and give you some notifications if they find anything dangerous, but False positives will give a false notification.
You may think false positives are not something serious but this progress will eat up your valuable resources. Besides, if this condition happens a lot, it will affect your judgment about whether the real virus or malware has been removed. At last, you won’t believe the scanning results from your antivirus.
Compared to false positives, there is another concept about false negative in cybersecurity. It means that the security software fails to detect the potential dangers in the system and tells users that their PCs work well and no threats exist, which increases your cyber risk and reduces your ability to respond to those attackers. That’s why you should choose a more reliable and professional antivirus software.
So, what should you do to identify this cyber security false positive and negative? In the next part, you can check for the answers.
How to Identify False Positive in Cyber Security?
First of all, you can try more than one antivirus to carry out a full scan for your system. If all the security software tells bad news about the security status after a scan, you can search the scan result on the browser to check if there is any result that can tell its authenticity.
What if you run into the false negative issue instead of the positive? More serious troubles, right? The powerful hackers seize the chance to infiltrate your system via those security vulnerabilities and your antivirus fails to identify it, such as Pegasus malware. When some substantial problem occurs, nothing can remedy the disaster.
Some users may ask that is Microsoft Defender enough to protect their PC. Targeting this problem, you can trust this Windows built-in security software but also you can choose to add a level of security for guarantee, such as anti-malware or firewall.
Besides, it is easy to identify if your computer has been infected with viruses or malware. There are some obvious signs of that:
- Sudden PC slow-down or freezing
- The PC is inundated with pop-ups
- Your browser keeps getting redirected to other sites
- Ransom demands
- Abnormal resource consumption
- Etc.
For more details about the infection signs, you can check this post: What’s a Possible Sign of Malware on Computer? 6+ Symptoms.
Protect Your Data – MiniTool ShadowMaker
How to protect your data from cyber security false positive and negative? Data backup is what we recommend most. You can back up files that matter via this free backup software – MiniTool ShadowMaker.
MiniTool ShadowMaker has many excellent features, providing a one-click system backup solution and other backups for partitions and disks. With various types of backups, you can set up automatic backups after configuring the time point to save the consumed backup resources. It can be the prime choice if you are looking for a backup tool.
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Bottom Line
To better protect your PC and ensure its security, you need to learn more about the results of antivirus scans. This post has introduced how to identify false positives in cyber security and you can better appraise the security level of your PC. Furthermore, backup could always be the prime choice for your data security.