You shouldn’t rely on any single cybersecurity tool to protect your business from cyber threats. There are dozens of types of cyber threats, some of which can evade certain cybersecurity tools. With advanced threat protection (ATP), though, you can leverage multiple cybersecurity tools. ATP will apply multiple layers of protection to your business’s information technology (IT) infrastructure. Even if a cyber threat makes it past one of these layers, the ATP’s other layers may stop the cyber threat.

ATP Defined

ATP is a collection of sophisticated, advanced cybersecurity tools. It’s typically sold as a service. You can subscribe to an ATP service. And after deploying the ATP service on your business’s IT infrastructure, it will block potential cyber threats.

Common Features of ATP Services

What can you expect to find in ATP exactly? Features of ATP services may vary. With that said, most ATP services offer real-time monitoring. They will monitor your business’s IT infrastructure for cyber threats in real time.

All ATP services include malware scanning. They will scan your business’s files for malware as well as vulnerabilities that could otherwise lead to a malware infection.

Many cyber threats involve malicious network traffic. Denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) cyber attacks consist of malicious traffic that spams a victim’s network. Fortunately, ATP services can block malicious network traffic. You can use an ATP service to filter malicious traffic from your business’s network, thus protecting against DoS and DDoS cyber attacks.

Why You Should Use an ATP Service

With an ATP service, you can rest assured knowing that your business’s IT infrastructure has multiple layers of protection. ATP services consist of multiple cybersecurity tools, some of which may include anti-malware software, a firewall, sandboxing, encryption and more. Because they leverage multiple cybersecurity tools, ATP services offer multiple layers of protection.

ATP services are considered proactive. In other words, they don’t react to cyber attacks by neutralizing the cyber threats after they occur. ATP services are proactive in the sense that they can prevent cyber attacks from occurring.

While ATP services aren’t free, they are typically worth the investment. You have to consider the cost of a cyber attack. Cyber attacks often result in data breaches. If your business sustains a cyber attack, some or all of its data could be stolen. Data breaches, of course, can be expensive. A Ponemon Institute study found that the average cost of a commercial data breach was nearly $4 million. An ATP service can protect your business from data breaches by applying multiple layers of protection to its IT infrastructure.