What Is Antivirus Software Program All About?

What is Antivirus Software Program?

Anti-virus software is a type of security software program which is designed to protect user computer from viruses, worms, Trojans and malicious programs (the internet threats that computer users afraid of) as well as removing them. Today, anti-virus program has become one of most popular software category on the planet since there is increasing number of malicious threats on the cyberspace.

There are many new viruses reporting almost every day at antivirus software companies; there are just many of them range from harmless, annoying to destructive. Some viruses just replicate themselves, but some can cause serious problems to user computer such as erasing all data on computer hard drive. You can see more detail on Types of Computer Viruses.

Antivirus software is widely used for all levels of users including home, office, small and medium business, and large enterprise and available for multiple operating systems include Windows, Mac, Linux and FreeBSD. There are both Professional and free of charge edition. Most of professional anti-virus software has integrate anti-spyware features, this feature can protect from spyware and remove spyware out of computer (spyware is small program that get into user’s computer without notify and take control on any activity of user, the spyware is created intend to steal your personal information especially credit card number).

You can click here Professional Antivirus Vs Free Antivirus Software to find what are the differences as well as which edition should I use.

How Antivirus Software Protect Your Computer?

The process on how antivirus software protect user computer is involving many technical terms. But I try to reduce some and make it simple for understanding. The important thing you should know is that antivirus software program provides user two security scanning functions (1) On-Access Scanning and (2) On-Demanded Scanning.

1. On-Access Scanning

On-access scanning sometime known as real-time scanning, it has important role to ensure that your computer is protected all time by checking for viruses to any accessing in the computer such as copying file, opening application and so on.

This function is very important, I recommend you to always keep it on and never disable it especially when you are surfing. I see many users disable this feature off since it cause slower performance in their computer (Yes, some antivirus software programs really make computer performance slower). They scarify security in exchange of computer performance. You know what, many of them, their computers infect by viruses.

Do you think this is a good idea? I believe “No”, absolutely not. You may ask there is any solution for that concerning to slow performance. Yes, the solution is that you need to have an antivirus program which has little effect to computer performance which runs in background of computer system.

2. On-Demanded Scanning

We have talked much about on-access scanning. Now it is time to discuss on what on-demanded scanning is about. When you see the word On-Demanded, I believe you got some ideas in mind. This feature provides you ability to do scanning on any areas in your computer including one or many folders, specific file or drive and even the whole computer.

After scanning, the program will provide you reports about what it had scanned, how many viruses have been detected, how many files or folder have scanned and so on. If the program found any viruses or infect files, it will ask you whether deleting or quarantine them.

What are Virus Detection Methods which Antivirus Software Use?

After reading above explanation, you got basic understanding about antivirus software protection procedure. Now, let go a bit in-depth on what detection method the program use for detecting viruses as well as other malicious programs.

1. Signature Based Detection

One common virus detection method is Signature Based Detection including both free and professional editions. For many antivirus software programs, the signature based detection is core feature for identifying viruses and other malware. How does it work? The process is simple to understand, the software use virus signatures dictionary (the database which contains a lot of virus signatures the company found) to compares the files when checking for viruses.

As new viruses, worms, Trojans, and other malicious programs appear each day, you have to update virus signatures dictionary in order to keep software ability to protect against new threats. If your antivirus program is not updated, it cannot detect new viruses because new viruses are not listed in virus signature dictionary. You can read more on Updating Antivirus Software Guides.

2. Behavior Based Detection

Another detection method is malicious activity detection known as behavior based detection method. The antivirus software will monitor and control any activities in the system for suspicious program behavior. When the program has detected that there is any suspicious behavior, there will be further investigation on that behavior by using signature based detection to ensure that it is a malicious activity or not. When the program found that it is really a malicious behavior, there will be an alert message to let you know about it.

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