What Is Antivirus and How Does It Work?
Antivirus is one of the baseline tools MSPs use to protect their clients from viruses and malware. But understanding how it works isn’t just important for MSPs — consumers also need to understand the basics of antivirus and how it weaves into a greater cybersecurity strategy.
What Is Antivirus?
Antivirus software is computer programs designed to defend a personal computer or larger network against malicious files and applications. These programs are referred to collectively as malware, but more specifically they’re known as “viruses.” The word virus derives from the fact that some viruses have the ability to replicate themselves, which they do by infecting and corrupting other files and programs on the computer.
Modern AV software uses several methods to detect and remove malware from devices. These include signature detection, which looks for patterns or signatures associated with known viruses and heuristic analysis, which identifies suspicious behavior that might be characteristic of malware. Depending on the method, a file may be quarantined or deleted if the software recognizes it as a threat.
The best antivirus software will regularly update its list of viruses and malware definitions. This ensures that the software can recognize newly created or altered threats that haven’t yet been added to the list of known dangers. In addition, it can identify and block phishing websites and scams, prevent pop-up advertisements from running on a device, and scan external devices like USB drives for malware or spyware.