Computers are ubiquitous throughout our lives, from assisting us play and work, to monitoring hospital patients as well as controlling crucial manufacturing processes. This convenience has a downside because more devices based on computers are a target for hackers.
Antivirus protection scans programs and files to detect threats that could be present effectively acting as a real-time shield against cyber-attacks. It is able to identify infected files and programs based on their signature – a few lines of assembly code that alter the stack pointer, as an example – and compares them against a database of known malware. If the program is found to match, the antivirus software stops it from running or shifts it to quarantine, so it can be thoroughly examined and scanned.
Unfortunately, malicious software developers are constantly creating new programs that have more subtle and different signatures, so antivirus software need to keep updating their databases. The good news is that once a virus is discovered and added to the database of detection, it becomes more difficult for hackers to use the same signature against other machines.
The most reliable antivirus programs have many features that guard against the wide array of malware threats. They include: