Antivirus Software The Advantages Computer Science Essay

Antivirus is defending software designed for guarding your computers system & smart cell phones against Virus, Trojans & Hijackers etc. These all Viruses, Trojans & Win32 etc. are called Malicious Software in computer world. All Antivirus software run in the background at all times to protect & defense your computers system & smart cell phones & some antivirus are automatically updated through internet & some antivirus are needs manual updated through internet to protect your systems against Malicious software. [1]

Introduction:

Antivirus software provides many critical layers to protect from Virus, win32, Trojans & worm etc. The first document removal of the computer viruses was written by “Bernd Fix”. There are two types antivirus application in the computer world so that the time of the “Atari ST” platform designed in ‘1987’ & the first one was “G Data” & second was “UVK 2000” made by “Bernd Fix” in ‘1987’.The word ‘Antivirus’ is come from the word “Antibiotic” which means implies combat with an invading force of the programs. “Fred Cohen” designed the strategies relative to an Antivirus software & program in ‘1988’ to solve the virus problems. [2]

The old & previews years Antivirus software are not so good because those software only detected the Virus & Spyware etc. & remove it from your computers system & damage your some operating system files inside your computers & now AntiVirus software much better than old ones because it detected the virus & remove it without deleting your operating system files inside your computers & it also fight against new malicious software which come from internet network. Well in the preview years Antivirus software are not completely free downloadable on the internet means you could only find some antivirus software with trial version & now Antivirus software are completely free download without trial version . New Antivirus also checked the incoming & outgoing mail, email attachments etc. It also has internet security for internet threats. [2]

Advantages and Disadvantages:

Antivirus software is very useful in the preventing, controlling, virus & many more viruses program, which can damage the computers components from inside & operating system files to. [2]

Antivirus software are used the methods for searching killing Viruses & some of the well knows patterns of computer data & programs. [2]

Antivirus programs are very effective against the viruses program, whose is the biggest threat for your computer systems. [2]

Antivirus program has some limitations & drawbacks on the other hand, which effect on the computer system performance. [2]

In the computer world, inexperienced users can have many problems with the antivirus programs or software such as inabilities to understand, threats of the software & success of the antivirus programs & software are dependent on the ability of the user to understand Or knowing the right kind of balance between the positives & negatives things in the computer world. [2]

Antivirus software or programs can cause problems during the installation window in the computer system or upgrade the Windows Service packs in the computer system. [2]

Antivirus software can be hampered some few software programs because it used its own firewall to block application to store in the computer system. E.g. True Crypt. [2]

Some Antivirus program will not knowing by the policy assessment before make its own policy when it install in the computer system. [2]

There are three major types of detection which is used to identify the potential threats in the computer system such as: Signature based, Heuristic based & File emulation method. [3]

Signature based detection:

In this method, you can identify the viruses & malware virus software. Antivirus software can also compare the content files of the computer system to dictionary files of virus signatures because viruses are embed into themselves in the files shape or in pieces shape to infect the computers. [3]

Heuristic based detection:

In this method, you can only detect malicious activity relative to viruses & identify unknown viruses in the computer system. [3]

File emulation:

In this method, it has using the heuristic type approach which it executing the program in a virtual environment & which effect the action of the program performs & it also carries out the disinfection actions relative to the programs which run in the computer. [3]

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What is a Virus?

Viruses are the category of malicious program code & software, viruses are used for attempted to breach security value & break them & damage data of the computer system & display unwanted messages on the display screen & when the antivirus program for gabbing user passwords on a networks are called “LOGIN.exe”. These real “LOGIN.exe” programs which have intruder or infect the user programs are called “Trojan Horses” & when viruses program fall into the Trojans category than these viruses program have the ability to reproduce themselves again & again until user’s computer systems slow down performance & processing to any application & it infected the your operating system. [4]

Why Do Viruses Exist?

Now-a-days every computer virus programs are written by someone who wanted it to infect & damage other people’s computer systems & smart cell phones our world. So these Viruses program coding pass from computer to other computers system & these viruses may be not have direct effect on the some computers but it effects on the other resources like(Disk space & Memory) that’s why these viruses are harmful & it coding are very complex & it also contain some serious bugs which damages the computer system pretty badly. [4]

How do we will know if we have a virus & want to protect our computer systems?

If the someone computer systems are very running slower, freezing it & displaying error messages again & again than you should have the viruses in yours computers or operating system than u must install Antivirus software & scan your computer system with latest internet updated of the Antivirus programs security to clear your computer with viruses. [4]

How do we get these viruses on our computer system or operating system?

Computer systems can be infected by viruses because:

User using the Internet without having the latest updates of the Antivirus programs security installed into your operating system. [4]

User using the Internet without having a working firewall on the operating system or Antivirus software. [4]

User who opening the email attachments without knowing that who’s will send him or her. [4]

User visiting unreliable website pages than viruses automatically stored into your computer because these website pages contains the infected viruses programs. [4]

How do we get rid of the malware software?

To get rid of the Viruses you should use latest Antivirus software or latest Antivirus program security updates & now-a-days much new Antivirus software are able on the Internet free cost with one year’s updates free e.g. Norton Antivirus, McAfee Antivirus & Kaspersky Antivirus etc. [4]

What are types of Virus in the computer world?

There are several types of viruses in the world which your computers & your operating systems for examples: Worms, Trojan horses, Logic bombs, Mutated viruses, Polymorphic viruses, Bounty hunters, Boot sector viruses & Macro viruses etc. [4]

Worms:

Worms Viruses are used to spread over a network of the internet & hacks the computer system or operating system which connects with internet networks. [4]

Trojan horses:

Trojans viruses are used to create a security hole in the computer programs or operating system & infected the system files inside. [4]

Logic bombs:

Logic bombs viruses are used to trigger the specific event means computer systems date & programs of remote activation etc. [4]

Mutated viruses:

Mutated viruses are used to rewritten by hacker users to change the behavior or signature of the programs & made the multiple versions of the same viruses that infected the computer programs or operating system. So these viruses are also called variants. [4]

Polymorphic viruses:

Viruses which are used to automatically change according their appearance, like as a chameleon by giving the virus’s signature of the programs in encrypt-decrypt function so virus can only be recognize its own signature of the program. This kind of virus is called Polymorphic viruses. [4]

Bounty hunters:

Bounty hunters viruses are used to modify signature program stored by Antivirus program in the order to render them an inoperable in the operating system. [4]

Boot sector viruses:

A boot sector virus is used to infecting the boot sector of a hard drive of the computer system. (Just like MBR “Master boot record”) & it also has infected the speed of the processer. [4]

Macro viruses:

Viruses which came from email, email attachments etc. to damage the operating system or hack the computer system [4]

BackDoor.exe Viruses:

These viruses are highly dangerous because it can give the complete shell of the victim’s computers to the attacker. These exe are made by many encryption techniques, so anti-virus hardly detects these types of viruses. [4]

What is Firewall & Spyware?

Firewall:

Firewall is software or program which have security tool to help limit internet network traffic with hackers or viruses to getting in your computer system. Firewall helped & protects your computer from future hackers & new incoming viruses. [4]

Spyware:

Spyware are used to a multitude of malicious software programs which access your computer system. When Spyware viruses infect your computer system or operating system than it will slow down your operating system speed & performance & your computer system going to hang again & again. [4]

Issues relative with the Antivirus software:

Unexpected renewal costs:

Some of the commercial antivirus software which includes end-user license agreements which effect on the subscription automatically & renewed it, cost so much which you not expected. [5]

False positives:

Antivirus software can used to identify non-malicious files which having the viruses so that it will be cause serious problems for the computer system because false positive make operating system files very unstable because of the viruses. [5]

System & interoperability related issues:

When the multiple antivirus programs running on the computer or operating system than it will degrade the performance of the operating system & create conflicts in every programs running on the operating system. So this concept is called Multiscanning & If the functionality of the few software programs can be hampered by the active antivirus software on the operating system. [5]

Effectiveness:

The effectiveness of antivirus programs have been decreased in the previews year because of new & good Antivirus software launch on the markets & computer threat going dropped from 40-50% to 20-30% in this preview year. [5]

Rootkits:

Rootkits are major challenge for antivirus programs on the operating system & it had admin area access to the system to control, invisible & hidden the EXE from the running processes of the task manager on the computer system. [5]

What is Cloud antivirus method?

Cloud antivirus method is a technology that used the lightweight agent software to protect the computer system or operating system &it also used for analysis the data with provider’s infrastructure. To implement this Cloud antivirus method we used the multiple antivirus engines which scanning suspicious files from the operating system & this concept is called Cloud AV. Cloud AV was designed to send programs on the internet network where detection programs are used to improve the detection rates with multiple antivirus behavioral on the internet network. [5]

Online Scanning:

Some of the Antivirus provides maintain of websites with free online scanning on the internet with the entire computer such as like local disks, critical area & files relative to the computer systems. Well as you know that internet becomes the vehicle for communication in this world & people using digital communication on the internet with very fast speed & scope so that new kinds of viruses are increasing & spread all over the world of the internet network. If someone will not want to install antivirus on his or her computer than he or she can easily scan his or her computer online this is quickly & possible solution. [5]

What do u means by the birth rate & death rate of the viruses?

The Birth rate of the viruses:

The birth rate of the viruses depends upon the one infected computer system or operating system which can spread this infection to other computer system or operating system. [5]

The Death rate of the viruses:

The death rates of the viruses depend upon the infection found on the computer system or operating system & destroy that computer system. [5]

Antivirus products:

There many products of antivirus. Some of them are discuss below:

Avast Free AntiVirus:

Avast is an antivirus computer program made by AVAST Software a.s. Avast is the freeware version of the Avast company. Avast can be installed on Microsoft Windows, Macintosh Operating System X and Linux. It also has command line scanner system and different dangerous script blocker. It has many new features e.g. file system shield, Real time protection form worms and threats. Mail shield protect from dangerous mails and attachments In it. Web shield protects form malicious URL or virus containing sites. Network shield protect from attacking ports and known network worms. Boot time scan, scans the infections that are loading during windows startup and remove them. If any virus is found, antivirus displays the notification to the user, and asks for action to take. [6]

AVG AntiVirus:

AVG is another antivirus program made by AVG Technologies. It can be installed on multiple platforms and FreeBSD computing platforms. It also has a free version of antivirus. There are many components in avg antivirus. Anti-Spyware protects you from different spyware which are in your computers. Link Scanner scans the web links, whether they are affected or not. Web Shield protects you from viruses which come into your computer through internet. It has own firewall system to protect the system. It also has server’s version to protect the web/file servers, mail servers and dns severs. [6]

Avira AntiVirus:

Avira is considered as the 6th largest antivirus software worldwide. And it has 100 million customers. It can be installed on Android and other operating systems. It runs as a background process which checks every file opened or downloads form the internet. It has different components in the antivirus. Email scanning which supports POP3 and SMTP protocols. Web Guard to block the access of malicious sites. It has personal firewall and anti-spam system. Backup module to protect and secure the important data. Keep an eye on different Botnets, and prevent them. It offers tools including a “Rescue System” utility used to write a bootable CD and DVD. Some main features of Avira windows versions are: [6]

Anti-Phishing

Mail Guard

Game Mode

AnitBot

Parental Controls

Bitdefender Antivirus:

The Bitdefender products include antivirus and antispyware, personal firewall, privacy control, user control, backup for company and home users. PC Tuneup and Performance Optimizer. It can be used in Symbian Operating System, Windows Mobile, and Solaris. A free basic online scan is offered by the Bitdefender via the bit defender website. Bitdefender introduces the new technology B-HAVE. Through which it can detect the unknown threats.[6]

ESET NOD32 Antivirus:

ESET first ever product was NOD, an antivirus program for computers running MS-DOS. Then after some time period it introduces the NOD32 for Windows XP. In September 2010 ESET released NOD32 antivirus for Macintosh OS. It also supports BSD, Linux, Novell NetWare and Sun Solaris. ESET NOD32 includes an enhanced media control that automatically scans all USB, CD/DVD and external hard drives. [6]

F-Secure Antivirus:

F-secure is first antivirus to establish an existence on the World Wide Web. F-secure first introduced the anti-rootkit technology. It can be installed on Mobile security; it has also the facility of online Backup and anti-theft for Mobile. Also available for Linux, servers, Policy Manager, protect the message security gateway. F-secure developed the new technology through which new or unknown malware, which causes the changes in windows files and windows registry. F-secure teach the one semester course in university about new viruses and other technology. F-secure antivirus can also detect the backdoor.exe virus. F-secure also helping the authorities to catch the mafia or terrorist organization through their antivirus. [6]

K7 Antivirus:

K7 is the first antivirus to build their own NST (Nano Secure Technology), has ability to protect the system at multiple layers. Which can detect and remove the existing threats and as well as future threats. It provides support browsing against attacks by the attackers, to steal the passwords or even your money. It also produces the various applications and antivirus for DOS. The basic feature are firewall, Anti-spam, Anti-Spyware tools, K7 mail security, security tools to detect the key loggers, Tracking Cookie detection, usb scanning, safe cloud base scanning.[6]

Kaspersky Antivirus:

Kaspersky product designed to protect the user’s from malicious malware and other threats. It runs on different platforms and Linux version available only for business users. Its features include real-time protection, removal and detection of viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware, key loggers, backdoors, sql injection and many others. It also has the online helping facility to help and guide the user about their new products. Rescue disk facility is also available in Kaspersky. This scans the computer at boot time. The features which are not implemented in the antivirus program are personal firewall, AntiSpam and parental controls. Kaspersky uses the highly graphics to display the interface, so their system requirements are high. At early stages of Kaspersky, it has very crucial flaws in it, through which attackers can attack and run the piece of code to compromise the user’s pc. [6]

McAfee Antivirus:

McAfee Antivirus is very powerful antivirus & it is light weight. This Antivirus is the leading antivirus software in the security industry & markets. This Antivirus have two features one is ScriptStopper & second is WormStopper & it automatically updater it virus definitions updates on the regular basis from internet network. [7]

Panda Antivirus:

Panda Antivirus have Ultrafast new feature scanning engine as compared to other antivirus applications. This Antivirus have the Anti-Phishing filter & Anti-Banking Trojans engines in the Identity protection area & it have advanced heuristic scanning with personal firewall. [7]

ZoneAlarm Antivirus:

ZoneAlarm Antivirus have very strong removal ability to destroy the dangerous viruses & also having multilayered security. This Antivirus used less processer power of performance & it used very low computer system resources. [7]

TrendMicro Antivirus:

TrendMicro Antivirus is very popular antivirus, which mostly used for Spyware protection & Adware protection from viruses. This Antivirus has some new features like Remote file locking & sharing & registry files. [7]

Sophos Antivirus:

Sophos Antivirus includes the network access control, Anti-spyware etc & this types of Antivirus are used for watching on the data supplying through monitoring & tracking software means like upload videos. [7]

Rising Antivirus:

Rising Antivirus is the Chinese Antivirus software & it is used for UTM, spam-blocking & firewall etc. This Antivirus basic function is BIOS rootkit checks. [7]

Vba32 Antivirus:

Vba32 Antivirus programs are used in the personal systems & it neutralizes viruses which infected or attack the computer systems on the real time.

Linux Shield:

Linux Shield is the Antivirus product used in the Linux operating systems to clean the viruses from Linux operating system. [7]

Technology Highlights:

There are many technology highlights such as :

First Generation (Antivirus):

The first generation of Antivirus software are based on the signature detection & polymorphic engines. [8]

Second Generation (Antimalware):

In the preview few years, new types of malware software are emerge & file-less network worm etc are on the spotlight of the massive & damage viruses are on the internet network. These problems can be solving by personal firewalls & clear the signatures packet from viruses & used smart & clean Browser which will not infect the operating system with the spyware & Trojans viruses. [8]

Third Generation (Proactive Technology):

TruPrevent:

This behavioral technology is used for research & development of the technologies. It has two main function technologies: Behavioral of analysis & blocking known computer system. [8]

(i). Behavioral Analysis:

This Act as last line of defenses against new viruses which executing in the computer system & it give real time results & used behavioral category alone. [8]

(ii). Behavioral Blocking:

This is the Second main component of the TruPrevent. It knew hacker & viruses behavioral to attack system application by injecting with program codes into the computer system. [8]

Genetic Heuristic Engine:

These technologies are inspired by the biology & work as an organisms which individually identified by the other organisms. It based on the digital genes. This carries out new viruses & harm things which going to infect or damage the computer system or operating system. [9]

Collective Intelligence (The Next Generation):

Collective Intelligence used the approach which collect the objective of this technology in which after clean the computer system or operating system it automatically generated full report cleaning viruses report & it much faster & lightweight in the future. It protected your computer system 95% up to 98% & it also give your infecting computer system percentage according to the report. It is also collect the data from the communities which can tell us about the behavioral patterns of the any programs & files. It also have the information about higher visibility threats against viruses or active on the internet network & it can be automatically do data processing on the computer system & analyzes thousands of new samples which received every day from internet network & it will not expired the data which infect by the new malware viruses. It automatically saved the data & files from new & old malware & it also release the knowledge extracted from delivering to user on the web services & updates it. In this platform we can do collective intelligence technology or platform for online services & designed to perform of the machines against malware viruses & solve the security solution. It also gives corporate requirements information & performance of the malware that’s why we created a specific managed service called Malware Radar. [10]

Proof Point Virus Protection key capabilities:

Viruses Protection key depend up on the efficient message analysis, Continuous business enterprise virus-detection updates, Integrated Administration & reporting & flexible policy management & message disposition. Viruses protection key have the enterprise antivirus engine which gives good efficiently of the scanning messages & attachments for new malicious codes which give fully proof point platform & find new viruses definition which created the cloud-based Dynamic system which secure channel & guarantees with proof point protection is already up to date than it will gives business enterprise with maximum detection against all viruses for IT administrators gives very importance to all antivirus enterprise of the proof point of the protection. It also used dynamic update service make for organizations. In this proof point’s virus protection are also used an integrated administration & reporting in the enterprise protection suite with complete control on it. In the virus protection it used unified interface on the enterprise antivirus technology which allows business configure with all aspects of the viruses protection. Virus protection includes virus filtering activity which detect & cleaning processes. Proof point virus protections also have the flexible policy management & message disposition which defines enforce virus-related security policies of any company & organization. Virus protection has virus’s analysis with message in which it can be quarantine for administrative rights. Proof point virus protection is also used for targeted Attack protection with new approach & big data analysis techniques. Cloud-based solution is used to clean your email attacks & full lifecycle approach. It can use proof point anomalytics techniques for email threats identified on the real time which includes message properties. It is protect URL with click time defense service which ensures the dynamically rewritten to the suspicious URL & based on the analysis of proof point Anomalytics, proof point malware analysis service & it respond on the threat insight service which performances security professionals on the real time for specific threats on the web-based dashboard. [11]

System Shield from Viruses:

System shield approach is used to ensure real time threat protection & advanced seek & destroy methods. It increases computer system performance & reliability & create seals off intelligently from future threat & viruses programs. System shield active & boots your defense technology which are virtually invisible & when the virus comes into the system than it will protect it & uses less memory for protection & used few CPU resources to recover it from viruses & antispyware software. Some user turn off security programs when the playing games for high-performance revolution on the game that’s why system shield are used on the system to run in the background while antivirus security programs is turn off. System shield are used overloaded layers for security protection. [12]

System shield do multiple detection techniques for maximum protection & flexible architecture that allows for faster processes against on malware software. To avoid computer viruses & recent threats do not open email attachments & avoid the download files from unknown website. [12]

Antivirus software is the important tool for protection of the computer system from viruses & worms. This antivirus technology gives benefits to users for clean computer system from viruses. Many of viruses spread to the computer system or operating system through internet network now-a-days 50,000 viruses are online on the internet network which infects 20,000 computer system or operating system on daily based. These viruses infect user personal information & private files in the computer system. One of the main problems of the antivirus technology is that most of antivirus software or programs slow down computer system processes & memory or corrupt the operating system. This antivirus technology used computer support representation (CSR) in the IT security. Some antivirus technologies have scan engine for carrier-grade protection & some organization need best of the best antivirus technology to clean from viruses, spyware & other malware software. Some antivirus technologies have dual protection & used server space leading antivirus competitor. [14]

The last generation antivirus software has lineup detection for file-reputation analysis which used for incorporate cloud-security & increases the safety. This antivirus used side by side computer security. Advanced Antivirus technologies are used for developed proactive protection of the viruses & annoying security clean with the web-link scanners. All security software used scope of the protection in which solution multi-layered protection & has traditional protection. Antivirus software has effectiveness on the computer system & operating system. Some Antivirus software very complex stuff to understand it. All antivirus software features will have security solution which boots the usability, security, maintains & performance. Security software must be upgrade to detect latest viruses. Now-a-days antivirus technologies are used in the cell phones, emails, live chatting & other resources. It also gives online & offline services support & easy to use in the real life all these modern technologies. [15]