BotNet News

Antivirus software is a must-have for any computer or device connected to the internet. It looks at the data traveling over your network to identify known threats and flag suspicious behavior. It then protects against viruses and malware with a combination of prevention, detection and removal.

The term “virus” is still commonly used to refer to a malicious program that latches onto a host file, corrupts it and then self-propagates to other files on the same system or across the network (similar to the way a biological virus spreads through an organism’s cells). Today, however, technology vendors use the more encompassing term “malware” to describe a wide range of harmful programs that can steal information, damage devices or degrade computer performance.

When antivirus software detects a potential threat, it isolates the malicious code from other files and programs on your device, stops any operations that could damage other files or programs and then thoroughly deletes the dangerous code. Depending on the software, it may also alert you or prompt you to clean the infected file.

Some antivirus software relies on signature-based detection. This approach compares the contents of a file against a database of known malware signatures to identify potentially dangerous programs. Heuristic-based detection is generally used alongside signature-based detection and uses an algorithm to recognize suspicious patterns in the behavior of software that could indicate a malicious intent. Some software also uses behavioral-based detection, which observes a program in action and uses an analysis of the results to determine whether or not the program is safe.