If you want to know something more about antivirus

Nowadays the use of computer has become an usual action for all of us. We use it for job's reasons or just for pleasure and fun. What we have to pay attention to is that all our data can be damaged or threatened by malware, worms or trojan horses which may attack informatics' devices. The antivirus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove all computer viruses, including adware, spyware and other forms of malware.

Before Internet connectivity was widespread, viruses were spread by infected floppy disks. As internet usage became common, initially through the use of modems, viruses spread throughout the Internet.

How does an antivirus work?

To find it out, I've searched info on the net and I've read that a large variety of strategies can be employed. Signature-based detection involves searching for known malicious patterns in executable code. Heuristics is used to counter such so-called zero-day threats. One type of that approach, generic signatures, can identify new viruses or variants of existing viruses by looking for known malicious code in files.

However, no matter how useful antivirus software is, it can sometimes have drawbacks. Antivirus software can degrade computer performance if it is not designed efficiently. Inexperienced users like me, and maybe like many of you, may not easily understand the prompts and decisions that antivirus software presents them with. In addition to the drawbacks, the effectiveness of antivirus software has also been researched and debated. According to one study, the detection success of major antivirus software drops over a one-year period.

Many viruses start as a single infection and, through either mutation or refinements by other attackers, can grow into dozens of slightly different strains, called variants. Generic detection refers to the detection and removal of multiple threats using a single virus definition. For example, the Vundo trojan has several family members, depending on the antivirus vendor's classification. Symantec classifies members of the Vundo family into two distinct members, Trojan.Vundo and Trojan.Vundo.B.

I hope I gave you useful info to help you protect your computer from all viruses!