BotNet News

Viruses, spyware, phishing scams, ransomware and other cyberthreats have one goal: to steal or corrupt your information or take over your devices. Antivirus software protects your digital systems against viruses and malware by scanning your files, programs and applications in real time.

The most common antivirus program uses signature detection. It looks for patterns that are characteristic of certain types of viruses and flags any programs that match those patterns as viruses. It’s reactive, though — a virus must be known to make it into the antivirus database for it to detect it.

Some programs also use heuristic-based detection, which attempts to identify a new type of virus based on characteristics that have already been used in previously known ones. But heuristic-based detection can sometimes generate false positives, in which the program mistakenly identifies normal behavior as malicious.

Another way that antivirus programs identify malware is by looking at the behavior of each file. It isolates any suspicious programs and makes sure that they can’t make changes to the device, program or application. It then deletes the files and/or alerts the user.

As hackers get savvier and attacks become more sophisticated, cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important for businesses. It’s not just that businesses have confidential data and customer information that criminals are after — they also have business operations that need to keep running, regardless of whether a hacker has access to the network. This is why having a solid antivirus system in place is vital.