Anti-virus

Anti-virus software is a computer program that detects, thwart and remove computer viruses and other malicious software.

The features

One of the basic features of anti-virus software is that it scans files in your computer hard disk and your computer’s memory for certain patterns that may indicate virus infection. It is this pattern, the anti-virus software looks for are based on the definition or signature of known viruses. The definitions or signatures of the known virus are store in the anti-virus database. Due to the virus writers are continually release new and update viruses, it is important that you have the latest definitions or signatures installed on your computer, so update regularly or set the anti-virus software to update automatic (usually this is a default setting of the anti-virus software).

Another feature is called real time protection. With this feature the software run at the background of all the other computer processes, and intercept viruses program or suspicious behavior computer process before they infect the files. This feature able to protect you against viruses which want to infect your computer while you surfing the web or you accidentally download a malicious program without your knowledge.

What happen when virus found!

When anti-virus Software found a virus in your computer, it responses differently depend whether it detected the virus during an automatic or a manual scan. Some of the anti-virus package will alert you with a dialog box that it has found a virus and asking you to ‘clean’ the file (to remove the file) or quarantine the file. Other anti-virus packages may simply delete the virus without asking you first. So it is important that you should familiarize the anti-virus package you have, know its features so that you know what to expect. For the real time protection, the software simply flags you a message and asks you for your action whether you want to remove, quarantine or ignore it.

Installation process

During the installation process of the anti-virus software, the software may access the vendor web site and download the latest information. This is to make sure the anti-virus has the latest virus definition to combat the latest release viruses in the Internet.

After you have installed anti-virus software, you should run a complete scan of your entire computer periodically. Anti-virus usually provides automatic scanning and manual scanning. It depends what anti-virus package you choose, for automatic scanning, you able to configure it to automatically scan the entire hard disk or a specific files or directories. And the manual scanning is good for scan files that you receive from an outside source before opening them. Outside sources include email attachments, web downloads, floppy disks, CDs or DVD, this ensure they are viruses free before you open them.

Anti-virus vendors

In the anti-virus industry, there is many vendors producing anti-virus software, but all the anti-virus performs the some function – detect, block and remove viruses, so sometime deciding which one can be confusing. Sometime your decision may be driven by recommendation, features, vendor support or price, but one advice is that you have to cautious selecting the package which heavy advertise and claim that they can do almost everything.

Best defence against computer virus

Installing anti-virus software in your computer is one of the effective and easiest ways to increase your computer protection level. But you must know that whatever packages you choose, the anti-virus software relies on signatures, the software can only detect new viruses when that virus signatures is in the software signature database. So it is important to keep these signatures up to date. This means that your computer is still susceptible to viruses if the software vendor has not come up with the latest signatures in time to combat the latest viruses, you must continue take safety precaution.