What is Antivirus / Endpoint Protection?

Antivirus (today often called endpoint protection) is software that watches each computer for malicious programs such as viruses, ransomware, spyware, and blocks or removes them.

Why it matters: a single infected laptop can spread malware across your whole network or encrypt your files for ransom.

Practical example: an employee opens an attachment that turns out to be ransomware. Up-to-date endpoint protection recognises the behaviour and quarantines it before it can lock the company's files.

Getting started: make sure every company computer has active, licensed, automatically-updating protection. The built-in Microsoft Defender is a reasonable baseline for small teams; larger teams should consider a managed endpoint product.