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Antivirus is software that prevents malware infections, detects existing threats or attacks and eradicates them from singular computing devices, networks or entire IT systems. It monitors and scans websites, files and installed programs for known threats and analyzes day-to-day program behavior to identify anything unusual, parsing for suspicious traits that could indicate a virus attack.

Traditional antivirus software relies on a database of known file signatures to find and block malware attacks. This approach works well for identifying millions of established threats, but fails to recognize brand-new attacks like ransomware, which often appear with new file names or use code sequences that are different from those in clean files. Newer security tools use a combination of signature detection with behavioral analysis and machine learning to catch these zero-day attacks.

A good antivirus solution is lightweight and works as a background service, monitoring, scanning and detecting malware on your devices in real time. It also protects your devices from potentially harmful sites and warns you when downloading content that may contain viruses. It should also allow you to manually scan your device for potential threats and perform these scans on demand. Some advanced antivirus programs use a combination of these detection methods, alongside cloud-based intelligence and AI, to ensure that they can respond quickly and accurately to the latest threats. This is called next-generation antivirus (NGAV) protection. It’s essential for protecting your computers, laptops and mobile phones against the latest digital threats such as phishing scams, credential theft, living-off-the-land attacks, and ransomware.