Antivirus Software,
An overview of Anti-Virus Software
In this section we cover one of the most important aspects of
computer maintenance, antivirus protection.
The Virus
The internet is an excellent tool, and no doubt has changed
the way most people communicate, unfortunately the internet, email
in particular, has created an easy to target medium for the spread
of computer viruses, as you have probably heard these viruses can
cause absolute chaos to whole networks of computers at a time.
A virus is basically a malicious computer program, the effect
of viruses differ, some either modify, delete or steal data and
others may give control of your PC over to their creators via the
internet, one thing they all have in common is that if you get infected
and you don't have antivirus software you might not know you have
it until it is too late.
A Worm refers to a virus that can replicate and spread by
itself over a network (the internet for instance), these are getting
very common and are among the biggest trouble makers on the internet.
A virus/worm can sit on your machine for months (potentially
even years) without doing anything and then be triggered by a certain
date/time to do what it has been designed to do, this is referred
to as its payload.
As these viruses/worms become ever more advanced, the need
for antivirus software has never been so great.
Antivirus software
Antivirus software is designed to keep your PC free of these
computer viruses and worms, it does so by scanning your PC's file
system looking for known viruses, if a virus is found it will inform
you and then take steps to remove the virus threat.
Good antivirus software will automatically check any files
being transferred to and from your computer, any antivirus software
should at least scan attachments of incoming emails automatically
(even if the option can be turned off).
Virus definition files
Antivirus software usually works by checking a file for certain
patterns of binary code, the patterns which it uses to identify
viruses are stored in what is known as a virus definition file,
when a new virus comes out the virus definition file needs to be
updated to include the new virus' pattern.
The importance of keeping these definition files updated cannot
be overstated, basically antivirus software without updated definition
files is useless.
Most good antivirus software will update these files automatically
(or at least have the option to do so), the update of the definition
files is usually achieved by having the software connect via the
internet to the vendors website (server), and then downloading and
installing the latest virus patterns.
This is why it is important to purchase antivirus software
from an established company, imagine you bought antivirus protection
and then 6 months later the company went bankrupt, where would you
get your virus definition updates from ?
If you don't have antivirus software then check out these
antivirus products from established developers: