Bay Geeks Guide · Security What We Run Instead

Antivirus Isn't Enough Anymore

Here's exactly what we run on every device instead, and why it can undo a ransomware attack in seconds instead of just reporting that it happened.

By Alden, Owner · Updated September 17, 2026

The Routine That Used to Be Enough

If you've had a computer for more than a few years, you probably remember the routine: install antivirus, let it scan once a week, and assume you're covered. For a long time that was reasonable advice. It isn't anymore.

What Today's Attacks Actually Look Like

The attacks hitting small businesses today don't look like the viruses of ten years ago. They don't show up as a suspicious file a signature scan can catch. They show up as a login from an employee's real credentials at 2 a.m., a script that quietly encrypts a shared drive over a weekend, or a piece of software that looks perfectly legitimate right up until it isn't. Traditional antivirus checks files against a list of known-bad ones. If the attacker isn't on that list, nothing happens.

That's why every business we manage at Bay Geeks runs Bay Geeks EDR on every device, not as an upsell, as the standard.

What EDR Actually Does

EDR stands for Endpoint Detection and Response. An “endpoint” is any device on your network: laptops, desktops, servers. Instead of only scanning files, EDR watches how everything on that device behaves, all the time.

Watches

Behavior, Not Just Files

It notices when a program starts doing things it shouldn't, like a Word document launching PowerShell, or an application suddenly reading thousands of files in a row. It notices when someone tries to disable backups or create a hidden admin account.

Learns

What Normal Looks Like

It builds a picture of what normal looks like on each machine, using AI that runs locally, so it can flag what doesn't fit, even an attack it's never seen before, even while the device is offline.

Reverses

The Attack, Not Just the Warning

When it finds something, it doesn't just pop up an alert and wait. It can isolate the device from the network in seconds, kill the malicious process, and roll back the changes that were made.

That last part is the feature clients ask about most. Ransomware that would have taken down the whole office gets stopped on one machine, and that machine gets put back the way it was, in seconds instead of a multi-day restore from backup. See exactly how Bay Geeks EDR works, including the independent testing numbers behind it.

Why This Matters for a Business Your Size

There's a persistent belief that attackers only go after big companies. The data says the opposite. Small businesses get targeted constantly, precisely because they tend to have less protection and more to lose from a few days of downtime. A dental office, a law firm, a contractor with twelve employees: these are exactly the businesses that get hit, and exactly the businesses that can't afford a week of lost work and a ransom demand.

The average small-business ransomware incident costs far more than the ransom itself. It's the downtime, the recovery labor, the lost client trust, and in regulated industries, the reporting obligations. EDR is the single most effective thing you can put on a workstation to prevent that from happening in the first place. Our ransomware readiness checklist covers the rest of what a resilient setup looks like.

What It's Actually Like to Have It

Performance

Does It Slow Down My Computer?

For most clients, EDR is invisible. It runs quietly in the background and doesn't slow the machine down. Every so often it asks for a restart after an update, because some of its components run deep enough in Windows that they can't reload without one. That's it.

Privacy

Does It Watch My Screen?

No. It's looking at program behavior, not your spreadsheets or your inbox. Nobody at Bay Geeks is looking at your files, and the software isn't sending them anywhere. When something does get flagged, we see the alert, not your data.

Our team reviews every alert, confirms whether it's a real threat or a false positive, and handles it. You'll usually hear from us before you even knew anything happened.

Taking It Further: 24/7 Monitoring

EDR is included on every Bay Geeks maintenance plan: Automated, Premium and Advanced. It's automated, device-level protection running all the time, at no extra charge. For businesses that want a live team watching around the clock, our Advanced plan adds Bay Geeks SOC: 24/7 managed detection and response, where a security operations team reviews alerts and responds to threats every hour of every day, including nights, weekends and holidays. Attackers don't keep business hours, and for clients handling financial, medical or legal data, neither should your security.

EDR and a SOC aren't the same thing. See what MDR catches that antivirus and EDR alone can't, or check the signs it might be time to add one.

INCLUDED ✓