How does Antivirus Work?

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Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Antivirus software is a program or set of programs that are designed to prevent, search for, detect, and remove software viruses, and other malicious software like worms, trojans, adware, and more.

These antivirus tools are critical for users to have installed and up-to-date because a computer without antivirus software protection will be infected within minutes of connecting to the internet. The bombardment is constant, which means antivirus companies have to update their detection tools regularly to deal with the more than 60,000 new pieces of malware created daily

Many antivirus software programs still download malware definitions straight to your device and scan your files in search of matches. But since, as we mentioned, most malware regularly morphs in appearance to avoid detection, Webroot works differently. Instead of storing examples of recognized malware on your device, it stores malware definitions in the cloud. This allows us to take up less space, scan faster, and maintain a more robust threat library.

Features of Antivirus
• Scan specific files or directories for any malware or known malicious patterns
• Allow you to schedule scans to automatically run for you
• Allow you to initiate a scan of a particular file or your entire computer, or of a CD or flash drive at any time.
• Remove any malicious code detected –sometimes you will be notified of an infection and asked if you want to clean the file, other programs will automatically do this behind the scenes.
• Show you the ‘health’ of your computer