Anti-virus Software

Anti-virus Software

1. Anti Virus software is a utility program that is used to prvent malicious software from infecting your computer or detect and remove malicious software that has already infected your computer.

2. The common features you see in an anti-virus software include:

   • Scheduled scans that can be set to run automatically at specific times each day
   • Full scans initiated on demand for your entire hard-disk, specific folders or even external storage devices
   • On access scanning of all files opened, including documents and programs. This is also known as real-time protection.

3. Unfortunately, anti-virus software is not a perfect solution to protecting your system from malware. There are some implications to its use that must be considered:

   • It must be regularly maintained and updated to ensure the latest virus definitions are available. There are hundreds of thousands of new malware programs released every day and, without updating, your computer won't be able to identify and block them.
   • It doesn't offer total protection. There are always new malware programs being written that it takes time to spot and create the signatures for. There are also new security holes in software that can be exploited to get around the anti-virus. It does nothing to block hackers either.
   • It can slow down PC and network performance. Installing and running anti-virus software takes up quite a bit of hard disk space, memory and processing power. This will slow down other processes and programs running on your computer system.