Antivirus Software: The primary method of preventing the propagation of malicious code involves the use of antivirus software.
Antivirus software is an application that is installed on a system to protect it and to scan for viruses as well as worms and Trojan horses. Most viruses have characteristics that are common to families of virus.
Antivirus software looks for these characteristics, or fingerprints, to identify and neutralize viruses before they impact you.
Most of the newer antivirus packages will now look for problems with cookies as well, as shown in the Norton Security Suite.
Antivirus programs often look for problems beyond just viruses.
Thousands of known viruses, worms, logic bombs, and other malicious code have been defined. New ones are added all the time.
Your antivirus software manufacturer will usually work very hard to keep the definition database files current.
The definition database file contains all of the known viruses and countermeasures for a particular antivirus software product.
You probably won’t receive a virus that hasn’t been seen by one of these companies. If you keep the virus definition database files in your software up-to-date, you probably won’t be overly vulnerable to attacks.
TIP: The best method of protection is to use a layered approach. Antivirus software should be at the gateways, at the servers, and at the desktop.
If you want to go one step further, you can use software at each location from different vendors to make sure that you are covered from all angles.
The second method of preventing viruses is education. Teach your users not to open suspicious files and to open only those files that they are reasonably sure are virus-free.
They need to scan every disk, email, and document they receive before they open them. You should also verify that the securities are high within the applications that your user is using.
