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Protecting your computer from viruses is getting more and |more difficult each day. While it may sound a little paranoid, it is true that you cannot let your defense drop for one second. Even commercial giant Microsoft has found its own systems compromised on more than one occasion.

Do you remember the ‘good old days’, before the arrival of the Internet and downloadable programs? Life was simple then in terms of computer viruses. The primary way to catch a virus then was via floppy disks. By modern standards, it used to take quite a while before a virus was able to infect a computer and slow down the system. The antivirus software of that time was usually able to identify and eliminate viruses before they caused too much harm. Additionally, computer users were fairly savvy about how to defend themselves by scanning all floppy disks before using them.

The Internet changed all that. The Internet provided a medium by which viruses could move from host to host with lightening speed. A computer user had to begin to think about email, email attachments, peer-to-peer file sharing, instant messaging, and software downloads as virus entry points. Today’s viruses can attack through multiple entry points, propagate without human intervention, and take full advantage of weaknesses within a system or program. With technology advancing everyday, and the convergence of computers with other mobile devices, the potential for new types of threats also increases.

Fortunately, the advancement of antivirus software has kept up with the virus threats. Antivirus software is indispensable to a computer’s ability to ward off viruses and other malicious programs. These software products are designed to protect against the ability of a virus to enter a computer through email, web browsers, file servers and desktops. Moreover, these programs offer a control feature that handles deployment, configuration and updating. A computer user should remain diligent and follow a few simple steps to protect against the menace of a virus:

You should evaluate your current computer security system. With the danger of a new generation of viruses being able to attack in a large number of ways, the approach of having just one form of antivirus software has become outdated. You have to be sure that you have protected all aspects of your computer system from the desktop to the network, and from the gateway to the server. Consider a more wide-ranging security system which encompasses several features including antivirus, firewall, content filtering, and intrusion detection. This type of system will make it more difficult for the virus to penetrate your system.

You should install antivirus software developed by a well-known, highly regarded company, because new viruses come out daily, so it is important that you update your antivirus software daily. Become familiar with the software’s real-time scan feature and configure it to start automatically each time you boot your computer. This will protect your system by automatically checking your computer each time it is powered up.

Set your antivirus software to scan all new programs or files no matter from where they come from and apply caution when opening binary, Word, or Excel documents of unknown origin particularly if they were received during an online chat or as an attachment to an email.

Make sure you perform regular backups in case your system is corrupted. It may be the only way to retrieve your data if you computer becomes infected.

There are numerous applications available to consumers, so with a little research, you should be able to pick the program that is right for you. Many programs provide a trial version which allows you to download the program and test its capabilities. However, be aware that some anti-virus programs can be difficult to uninstall, so as a precaution make sure you set up a System Restore point and take back-ups before installing it.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with the cheap antivirus software. If you have an interest in such software, please go over to our website now at Computer Antivirus Software

Most computer users in the United States have heard of the foremost American antivirus manufacturers. Producers such as Symantec, McAfee, Computer Associates, and Trend Micro. These companies have a market leading presence in the United States. Microsoft, too, has plans to become a major player in this huge growth market.

In fact, Microsoft bought intellectual property and technology rights from GeCad software in 2003, a company based in Bucharest, Romania. They also acquired Pelican Software, which had a behaviour based security product, as well as the Giant Company Software for spyware and Sybari Software, which managed virus, spam, and phishing filtering.

A great deal of debate concentrated on whether Microsoft would end up in a domineering position in the antivirus market by simply bundling its recently acquired software technologies up with its Windows operating systems at no cost. This is a comparable technique that has been used in other markets such as word processing and Internet browsers. In fact, this is precisely what did take place. Microsoft has come out with a free product called Microsoft Security Essentials.

It is too soon for me to advise whether MS Security Essentials is a world-class antivirus product, but it is not free to everyone. Microsoft has been battling Windows piracy for a while now with its Windows Genuine Advantage sneaky download and sure enough, this new product from Microsoft will only work on Windows systems and even then, only with operating systems that pass the Windows Genuine Advantage test. (Please click the link at the bottom the page to find out more).

There is nothing wrong with that per se, but it does mean that scarcely anyone in the Third World will be able to make use of it, because a pirated operating system comes bundled with every computer that I have ever seen in Asia and probably elsewhere too. People save for years in order to be able to buy a computer and the last thing they care about when they plug it in is whether the operating system is genuine or not.

Of course there is a number of other antivirus manufacturers prominent in this market. There are many companies with great market presence in other countries that are starting to become more widely recognized. These vendors include GriSoft from the Czech Republic, Sophos from the United Kingdom, Panda Software from Spain, Kaspersky from Russia, SoftWin from Romania, F-Secure from Finland, Norman from Norway, Arcabit from Poland, VirusBuster from Hungary, Nod from Thailand and AhnLab from South Korea.

It is not yet apparent where the industry is heading and everyone in this market is confronted by a swiftly changing scenario. The amount of effort required to discover and deliver fixes for new viruses is quite staggering. Malware programs are becoming more and more complex and the number of them is escalating.

Many companies may find themselves without the resources to equal the hard work of those truly bent on creating chaos. The antivirus companies are receiving hundreds of new examples of viruses a day! What is more, the new viruses are getting “cleverer” in that they propagate themselves quickly and they often hide themselves too. Some are even smart enough to move around in a system by renaming themselves in an effort to make it hard to remove them.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with researching the Microsoft antivirus software. If you have an interest in such software, please go over to our website now at Computer Antivirus Software

If you log on to the Internet, you definitely need anti-virus software. It does not matter whether you do not use a computer. Whatever you use to get on line you must have anti-virus software. Although there are hundreds of malicious idiots producing viruses to harass those who access the Internet from a computer, there is an increasing number who are focusing on mobile phone users too.

It is harder to clear viruses from your cell phone as well, because there are less outlets for the anti-virus software and cell phone users are often less technically savvy than computer users, although the method of clearing the virus is quite analogous.

Let’s just use the example of using computers to go on line. If you go on line, your ant-virus software is your most essential item of software. It does not matter what you use the Internet for – transferring data back to base or receiving emails from friends – you are subject to attack.

For example, if you use the Internet only to communicate with your head office, a hacker could try to piggy-back your connection to gain admittance to the mainframe at head office and perhaps access financial or other personal data and if you just send to and receive emails from your friends and family, you are open to assault from malevolent fools around the world.

If you use webmail such as that offered by Yahoo, Hotmail and MSN to name only the most popular, you will be protected from the most obvious attacks, but still not safe. If you receive your email via an email client such as Outlook or Outlook Express, then you do not even have that small amount of protection.

If you do not use email, but only surf the Internet for study or whatever, you are still not safe, because some websites and loaded with viruses, trojans and worms, waiting to unload them onto unsuspecting surfers.

Therefore, whatever reason you surf the Internet for, you could do with some type of security. Luckily, anti-virus software for personal use is low-cost and can even be free. Business users will usually get tax relief on their purchases.

However, be cautious with the free anti-virus software, because not all of it is effective enough. The exceptions that spring readily to mind are Avira and AVG. These are exceptional items and have rightly gained worldwide acclaim. Just Google the two names to get the download address.

The anti-virus software that costs something (typically $25-$50 per annum) invariably offer one to two months free examination before you buy and a reduction in price, if you pay for more than one year at a time. Names that fall into this class are Kaspersky, McAfee, Norton and Nod.

After you have chosen your software, the subsequent steps are the same for free and paid software. First install it and then configure it. If you are not certain how to do that do not worry, the default settings are fine for the vast majority of users. The only choice you will get that it is imperative you make correctly is to consent to automatic updates.

New viruses are being exposed or fixed every day and for your anti-virus software to be effectual, you must allow it to update itself whenever it wishes to.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with the network antivirus software. If you have an interest in such software, please go over to our website now at Computer Antivirus Software

New computer viruses are being created, exposed and fought every day. These computer viruses are created often just to annoy us and to wreak mayhem in our computer systems. Below, I have described ten viruses currently cited as being the most widespread and being potentially able to cause the most damage. However, new viruses are being created daily, so this list is by no means complete. The only thing you can do is stay alert, keep your anti-virus software updated, and stay aware of the current computer virus threats.

Virus: Trojan.Lodear: A Trojan (from Trojan Horse) that attempts to download files from a remote source. It will inject a .dll file into the EXPLORER.EXE process causing system instability.

Virus: W32.Beagle.CO@mm: A mass-mailing worm that lowers security settings. It can delete security-related registry sub keys and may prevent admittance to security-related websites.

Virus: Backdoor.Zagaban: A Trojan that allows the infected computer to be operated as a covert proxy and which may degrade network performance.

Virus: W32/Netsky-P: A mass-mailing worm which spreads by emailing itself to addresses harvested from files on the local drives.

Virus: W32/Mytob-GH: A mass-mailing worm and IRC backdoor Trojan for the Windows platform. Messages sent by this worm will have the subject chosen randomly from a list including titles such as: Notice of account limitation, Email Account Suspension, Security measures, Members Support, Important Notification.

Virus: W32/Mytob-EX: A mass-mailing worm and IRC backdoor Trojan similar in nature to W32-Mytob-GH. W32/Mytob- EX runs continuously in the background, providing a backdoor server which allows a remote hacker to gain access and control over your computer via IRC channels. This virus propagates by sending itself to email attachments harvested from your email address book.

Virus: W32/Mytob-AS, Mytob-BE, Mytob-C, and Mytob-ER: This family of worm variations possesses similar characteristics in terms of what they are able to do. They are mass-mailing worms with backdoor functionality that can be controlled through the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) network. Furthermore, they can propagate themselves through email and through various operating system vulnerabilities such as the LSASS (MS04-011).

Virus: Zafi-D: A mass-mailing worm and a peer-to-peer worm which replicates itself to the Windows system folder with the filename Norton Update.exe. It can then generate a number of files in the Windows system folder with filenames made up of 8 random characters and a DLL extension. W32/Zafi-D replicates itself to folders with names containing words like ’share’, ‘upload’, or ‘music’ as ‘ICQ 2005a new!.exe’ or ‘winamp 5.7 new!.exe’. W32/Zafi-D will also show a fake error message box with the caption “CRC: 04F6Bh” and the text “Error in packed file!”.

Virus: W32/Netsky-D: A mass-mailing worm with IRC backdoor functionality which can also infect computers vulnerable to the LSASS (MS04-011) exploit.

Virus: W32/Zafi-B: A peer-to-peer (P2P) and email worm that will reproduce itself to the Windows system folder as a randomly named EXE file. This worm will check for the presence of an Internet connection by attempting to connect to google.com or microsoft.com. A bilingual, worm with an attached Hungarian political text message box which translates to ?We demand that the government accommodates the homeless, tightens up the penal code and VOTES FOR THE DEATH PENALTY to cut down the increasing crime. Jun. 2004, P?cs (SNAF Team)?

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with the network antivirus software. If you have an interest in such software, please go over to our website now at Computer Antivirus Software