You Need An Antivirus Software
In our previous article we discussed the importance of securing our local machines with a firewall, one of the reasons this protection is necessary is to shield our device from external sources that may inject malware, viruses and carry out other forms of malicious attacks on our computer system.
Firewalls are important, but sometimes, we simply need a simpler way of protecting our devices from viruses, not all standalone desktops have the luxury of being behind a firewall and not all operating systems’ in-built firewall can block certain types of viruses, especially the ones that have been transferred to our computer by error simply by inserting a flash drive or a hard disk into our devices. In this article, we introduce another security mechanism for providing users with protection against viruses, we introduce Antivirus Softwares. In order to know how antivirus Softwares work, we must learn what they fight against, viruses.
Virus
A computer virus is piece of code or software program that is capable of replicating itself on a computer system, copying itself onto multiple files, performing various operations on the file system without the users’ knowledge. In more simple terms, a virus is capable of corrupting, deleting, distorting various files, programs in the computer system, most times without the user of the device being aware of their operations. The interesting thing about viruses is that they possess a unique set of identifiers, a structured set of bits of code that enable them to be identified, that way one virus is uniquely distinct from another. This unique identifier is known as a virus signature. It’s more like the signature of a human being, it specifies that a particular individual has ownership of some property of some sort, the individual is then identifiable by his unique signature, the virus signature works in the same way.
The Antivirus
Now that we know what a virus is, it becomes fairly easy to define the term ‘Antivirus’. An Antivirus is simply a program the scans for viruses with the help of the virus signatures, detects their presence, and perform the appropriate actions on them, be it to delete the virus, to block it and prevent the virus from damaging files and programs in the computer system, we see now how Antivirus Softwares are very important to safeguarding our data. Not all antivirus Softwares are effective in detecting and scanning viruses, because not all Antivirus Softwares have enough information of various virus signatures in their databases, as such, some viruses can parade themselves as actual programs and since their signatures are not identifiable by the Antivirus Software, they can go undetected and cause damage to the computer device despite the presence of an Antivirus Software. This should make the user aware of the importance of purchasing the right Antivirus software, one that has most of the Virus signatures included in their database, one that also updates its database regularly to block any new type of virus that has come into existence.
How to set up an Antivirus on a Windows PC
- Click on the windows key and go to the start menu
- Select ‘settings’
- Select ‘Update & Security’
- Select ‘Windows Security’
- Finally click on ‘Virus & Threat Protection’
From this page you can view current threats and do a quick scan of viruses on the windows device.
Other third party antivirus are simply used by installing them into your computer device, opening and running them. Some run scans in the background and some have to be manually enabled to run scans and detect viruses. Among some of the few third party antivirus Softwares are Kaspersky, McAfee, Bitdefender, SmadAV, Norton e.t.c.
References
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