| | It is difficult to protect from a zero-day exploit by its very nature. However, there are a few important steps to help reduce risk. Developers should, of course, work to test and analyze their own software on a regular basis to find such vulnerabilities. Users have much less control, but can still do two things to help keep them safe. First, they are encouraged to apply all patches and updates as soon as possible. Once released, updates protect their users, but put those who have not updated at greater risk. Secondly, they are encouraged to use [[anti-virus software]] with heuristic detection which can help block attacks. Although the vulnerability will still exist, the anti-virus software can sometimes block malicious code delivered through it based solely on its behavior, thus stopping that particular attack. | | It is difficult to protect from a zero-day exploit by its very nature. However, there are a few important steps to help reduce risk. Developers should, of course, work to test and analyze their own software on a regular basis to find such vulnerabilities. Users have much less control, but can still do two things to help keep them safe. First, they are encouraged to apply all patches and updates as soon as possible. Once released, updates protect their users, but put those who have not updated at greater risk. Secondly, they are encouraged to use [[anti-virus software]] with heuristic detection which can help block attacks. Although the vulnerability will still exist, the anti-virus software can sometimes block malicious code delivered through it based solely on its behavior, thus stopping that particular attack. |