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 advent 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 today’s 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 pretty 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 blinding 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, spread without human intervention, and take full advantage of vulnerabilities within a system or program. With technology advancing everyday, and the convergence of computers with other mobile devices, the potential for new kinds of threats also increases.

Luckily, the development of antivirus software has kept pace 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 couple of simple steps to guard against the threat 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 tactic of having just one kind of antivirus software has become obsolete. You need to be certain 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 comprehensive 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 infiltrate 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 originate from and exercise caution when opening binary, Word, or Excel documents of unknown sources 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 many applications available to consumers, so with a little research, you should be able to pick the program that is right for you. Many programs offer a trial version which permits 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 vendors. Manufacturers such as Symantec, McAfee, Computer Associates, and Trend Micro. These organizations have a market leading presence in the United States. Microsoft, too, has aspirations to become a key player in this enormous growth industry.

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 dominant position in the antivirus market by merely bundling its recently acquired software technologies up with its Windows operating systems at no charge. 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 early for me to tell whether MS Security Essentials is a world-class antivirus product, but it is not free to everyone. Microsoft has been struggling with 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 check. (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 quantity of other antivirus vendors well-known in this market. There are many companies with great market presence in other countries that are beginning to become more extensively 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 clear where the industry is heading and everyone in this market faces a swiftly changing landscape. The amount of effort necessary to discover and provide fixes for new viruses is quite staggering. Malware programs are becoming more and more complicated and the number of them is escalating.

Many companies may find themselves without the capital to equal the efforts of those truly bent on creating mayhem. The antivirus companies are receiving hundreds of new samples 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