Antivirus – What Is It and How Does It Work?
Antivirus is software that scans, detects and prevents malicious software like viruses from affecting your computer. It’s a vital piece of security technology that serves as the baseline for protecting your devices against digital threats like ransomware, trojans, keyloggers, worms and spyware.
Cybercrime costs are skyrocketing, with damages expected to reach $10.5 trillion annually by 2025. Without robust antivirus protection, your organization could face significant data loss and disruption to critical operations.
While early viruses were mostly pranks designed to cause embarrassment or annoyance, the sophistication of malware has increased significantly. Modern viruses can encrypt files, hijack systems, and spy on devices and networks to steal valuable information.
Antivirus software detects these types of attacks and responds to them in one of two ways:
The vast majority of antivirus programs work by comparing programs, files, and applications that come into your system with a database of known malware signatures. Any matches are then quarantined or eliminated. The downside of this approach is that hackers can quickly churn out new and ever-more sophisticated viruses to overcome antivirus detection.
To combat this, the leading antivirus solutions now use a combination of signature detection and advanced heuristics to look for anomalous patterns or behaviors that are typical of malware. They also push updates to their customers every 5-15 minutes to keep up with current threats.