computer virus  

How to protect our computers from viruses 

Use a Firewall 

You should also install  firewall .A firewall is a system that prevents unauthorized use and access to your computer. A firewall can be either hardware or software. Hardware firewalls provide a strong degree of protection from most forms of attack coming from the outside world and can be purchased as a stand-alone product or in broadband routers. Unfortunately, when battling viruses, worms and Trojans, a hardware firewall may be less effective than a software firewall, as it could possibly ignore embedded worms in outgoing e-mails and see this as regular network traffic.

For individual home users, the most popular firewall choice is a software firewall.  A good software firewall will protect your computer from outside attempts to control or gain access your computer, and usually provides additional protection against the most common Trojan programs or e-mail worms. The downside to software firewalls is that they will only protect the computer they are installed on, not a network.

It is important to remember that on its own a firewall is not going to rid you of your computer virus problems, but when used in conjunction with regular operating system updates and a good anti-virus scanning software, it will add some extra security and protection for your computer or network.

 

17% of internet users surf the web without any antivirus software. In the United States that number is closer to 20%. And all of these users are just waiting to become zombies. We should follow the Finnish example—only 7% of Finns surf unprotected. 

 

Antivirus software

Antivirus or anti-virus software is software used to prevent, detect and remove malware (of all descriptions), such as: computer viruses, malicious BHOs, hijackers, ransom ware , key loggers, backdoors, root kits, Trojan horses, worms, malicious LSPs, dialers, fraudtools, adware and spyware. Computer security, including protection from social engineering techniques, is commonly offered in products and services of antivirus software companies. This page discusses the software used for the prevention and removal of malware threats, rather than computer security implemented by software methods.

A variety of strategies are typically employed. Signature-based detection involves searching for known patterns of data within executable code. However, it is possible for a computer to be infected with new malware for which no signature is yet known. To counter such so-called zero-day threats, heuristics can be used. One type of heuristic approach, generic signatures, can identify new viruses or variants of existing viruses by looking for known malicious code, or slight variations of such code, in files. Some antivirus software can also predict what a file will do by running it in a sandbox and analyzing what it does to see if it performs any malicious actions.

No matter how useful antivirus software can be, it can sometimes have drawbacks. Antivirus software can impair a computer's performance. Inexperienced users may also have problems understanding the prompts and decisions that antivirus software presents them with. An incorrect decision may lead to a security breach. If the antivirus software employs heuristic detection, success depends on achieving the right balance between false positives and false negatives. False positives can be as destructive as false negatives. Finally, antivirus software generally runs at the highly trusted kernel level of the operating system, creating a potential avenue      of attac

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivirus_software

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/F/firewall.html

What is a computer virus?

Computer viruses are small software programs that are designed to spread from one computer to another and to interfere with computer operation.

What do computer viruses do?         

                                                                             

Through the course of using the Internet and your computer, you may have come in to contact with computer viruses. Many computer viruses are stopped before they can start, but there is still an ever growing concern as to what do computer viruses do and the list of common computer virus symptoms. A computer virus might corrupt or delete data on your computer, use your email program to spread itself to other computers, or even erase everything on your hard disk.

Computer viruses are often spread by attachments in email messages or instant messaging messages. That is why it is essential that you never open email attachments unless you know who it's from and you are expecting it.

Viruses can be disguised as attachments of funny images, greeting cards, or audio and video files.

Computer viruses also spread through downloads on the Internet. They can be hidden in illicit software or other files or programs you might download.