BotNet News

As a digital forensics expert and cybersecurity teacher, it’s Josh Brunty’s job to help people stay safe online. But he recently discovered that his own father wasn’t getting the message: Despite all of the warnings, he still paid yearly for antivirus protection on his home computer.

Antivirus software protects against viruses, malware and other cyberthreats by comparing all of the data that goes into and out of your devices to a database of known malicious code signatures. It also scans the behavior of apps and programs to see if they are behaving abnormally, which can indicate that they are trying to steal or damage your information.

These days, the best antivirus solutions go beyond protecting you from existing threats based on a list that is constantly being updated (it’s one of the reasons it’s so important to keep your antivirus up to date). They protect you from completely new attacks with technologies that can accurately detect them, even when they haven’t been detected before.

This is particularly helpful for mobile devices, which are more likely to get viruses and other malicious code because hackers are constantly trying to find ways around detection systems like the Apple App Store or Google Play. Most of these devices don’t allow users to download any program from the internet and are therefore more susceptible to viruses that can make their way into a device’s operating system and then spread to other apps or other devices connected to it.