Anti Virus Software
publication date: Jul 7, 2006
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author/source: Terry Robson
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When you buy a new computer, antivirus software is often already installed. Sometimes this will be for a trial period that you will eventually have to pay for. If you use the Internet, especially with broadband, it is essential that you make sure you are protected with reliable antivirus software.
What the antivirus software does is build and maintain a dictionary of all known viruses. Then when it examines a file, it refers to this dictionary of known viruses. If a piece of code in the file matches the code of any virus identified in the dictionary, then the antivirus software can do one of the following: -
Attempt to repair the file by removing the virus itself from the file
Quarantine the file so that the file remains inaccessible to other programs
Delete the infected file
Quarantine the file so that the file remains inaccessible to other programs
Delete the infected file
If the antivirus software is to succeed it must be kept up to date. New viruses are invented all the time. The success of antivirus software is measured by how quickly it updates its dictionary and then downloads protection against any new threats to its subscribers.
When you go online your antivirus software should notify you of new threats automatically and offer you the latest updates.
Always accept them.
Antivirus software will examine files whenever they are created, opened, closed or e-mailed. It does this in the background while you are working. In this way it can detect a known virus immediately.
In addition do a full scan of your computer at least once a week. In this case the antivirus software scans every single file on your machine. This may take a long time so do it when you are not going to need the computer as the process may slow it down.
In this article I am not going to recommend any particular software but I have used Norton, McAfee and a free service from Grisoft called AVG.
One last word of warning – no antivirus software is perfect. Always remain vigilant.
In another article I describe some golden rules that will help you to keep you computer free of contaminants.
In this article I am not going to recommend any particular software but I have used Norton, McAfee and a free service from Grisoft called AVG.
One last word of warning – no antivirus software is perfect. Always remain vigilant.
In another article I describe some golden rules that will help you to keep you computer free of contaminants.