Use Antivirus Software! (1/3)

A computer blog wouldn’t be complete without mentioning actually ‘how’ to protect your computer from the bad guys. This post will serve as only one of the many other post I will write about in the future about computer protection. However, these are the most basic steps you can take. I will dedicate each topic with their own post so I can explain in better detail how they work.

1. Antivirus software
2. Firewall
3. Software patches and updates

Here are my list of the free antivirus software that I would recommended you use on your computer.

1. Avast! Home Edition

2. AVG Free

3. Antivir

4. PC Tools Antivirus

5. Threatfire (Optional: Read more about this in the post)

6. Microsoft Security Essentials

There are a couple of very interesting antivirus software out there that you can use all without paying a dime. In my opinion, there is one that just stands out from the rest of them and I have tried them all. That product is Avast!. Now that I have given you a list of the free products, I want to spend a little time explaining why it’s important to install an antivirus package on all your computers so you’ll know exactly the ‘whys’ and the ‘how’s’.

Whether you are connected to the Internet or not, your computer can be infected with a virus. A virus at its core is malicious software that once initiated, can wreck havoc on your machine. Depending on the virus author’s skills, results could range from simply deleting everything in your Documents folder all the way to deleting important system files to prevent you from booting up your machine. How do you get it? There are a ton of ways you can get a virus. The first is and biggest threat is when downloading software and other files from untrusted sources on the Internet. A virus usually needs to be run or initiated before it can do it’s damage. If you don’t click on that malicious file, the virus doesn’t really do anything. That’s where the antivirus software comes into play.

Antivirus software vendors create virus signature files to detect known viruses. They push these signature files to your computer via a update and if you come across a file with that known virus loaded in it, the antivirus product will alert you and usually will either delete or quarantine the file so it can’t do any harm to your computer. Now you’re probably wondering if this can actually happen to you. My answer is yes. Sometimes even computer security gurus can catch a virus. There’s another malware called ‘Trojan Horses’. These are the ones you really have to look out for, if possible. Think about it like this. Put yourself in the bad guy’s shoes just for a second. If you wanted to infect a lot of people with the virus you created, would you just give your virus code to the victim and hope they click on it? Technically, you can but it’s not the most efficient way to get the most infection rates (remember, you are the virus writer). Now what happens if you ‘bundle’ your virus code into a well known and popular software that a lot of people install? Exactly! More infections! You blend your bad software in with the good software into tricking the user to installing it. The user would think that nothing is wrong with the software because everyone else uses it so he/she will think nothing of it. A Trojan Horse is actually more dangerous. Usually once installed, the Trojan Horse will now create a ‘back door’ of your computer so that the virus writer can now freely enter and exit your computer without you ever knowing. That’s how scary it is. Without any antivirus software, you would never know that a stranger is actually using your computer and can see what you do on it as well. He can now freely steal your personal information if you have any stored on the computer, copy your credit card numbers, delete your files to cause havoc and so much more. That’s why another good strategy to combat Trojan Horse and viruses is to only download files and software from well known sources.

Now you might have a question about the antivirus signature files. If there is no signature files for a virus, will my computer be compromised? This question has both a YES and NO answer to it. Yes in that if you somehow download a virus with no signature file for it (also known as a zero day exploit) and run the software, then yes, you will be infected as your antivirus product have no way to determine if the coding is legitimate or not. No, in that you can download and use Threatfire. I love this program in that it doesn’t rely on signature files. Instead, it scans and monitors your PC from malware and viruses using a behavioral or heuristics engine. In short, the program is smart enough to know what a legitimate program should and should not be doing on your computer. For example if a simple Word document you downloaded somehow wanted to secretly delete your system files in the background, Threatfire will immediately flag that action as ‘illegitimate’ and warn you about it. This software can be run side by side with whatever antivirus software you pick. However, remember that it is generally not a good idea however to run two different antivirus engines/software on a computer.