What are Antivirus Software? How do they work? Which one to buy?
What are Antivirus Software?
If you are suffering from fever or any type of sickness then what do you do? Most obviously, you would take some kind of medicine to cure the sickness and to protect you from any further diseases that would cause you.
So, the same is with the PC. When a gets infected by some disease called virus then an Antivirus Software come to handy to cure the sickness of the computer. In simple way, it removes the virus from your computer and makes your computer safe. There is not much about What is an Antivirus Software because all of us know about it. So let us begin with the next subject.
How do they work?
We all use antivirus software and are we ever got curious that How do they work? After you know the working this PROTECTION providing software, you would get amazed on its great functionality. Working of Antivirus could be divided into the following points:
Background Scanning of your Activity.
Behavior detection of the program.
Verification of programs by their signature.
So, let us discuss each points one by one :-
1. Background scanning of your Activity - Antivirus Software are made intelligently to detect your activity on your computer. Whether you open a text file or Google Chrome, antivirus keeps a track of it in real-time. You might have Antivirus Software websites claiming that they provide real-time monitoring. But how does real-time monitoring works? When you open a file, then the antivirus software looks for any malicious thing. It does this by verification of the file in its virus database and if it finds something unusual then it blocks the file from opening and removes it away. Each and every file you open, the antivirus keeps on this process of verification. That's why you might feel a PC much faster without an antivirus software because no verification of the file has been done on its opening. This results in faster opening of files. But in the case of a PC with an antivirus software, it firstly verifies the file that you are trying to open and if everything is fine then file is opened. Else, it will be blocked by the AV.
2. Behavior Detection of the program - Your smart Antivirus software have another feature which we can call as Behavior Detection. Whenever an antivirus fails to monitor the virus through its real-time monitoring service, so there is another service that will look into the virus and it is Behavior Detection Service. Now, again, How does it work? In simple words, we can say that the antivirus notices that what the program is currently doing. If the program (which is a virus) is continuously creating several folders or files or opening certain exe files or attempting to delete several files from your system then antivirus confirms that all the malicious processes are done by the unknown program not by the user and then that program is recognized as a virus. Now, you would understand that what would happen to the virus :)
3. Verification of program by its signature - Each software which may be developed by a trusted publisher or an untrusted one. Now each trusted publisher has its own unique signature. You might have seen a prompt when you run a program for your confirmation. It looks similar to the image below:
For example, when you run Google Chrome setup, then you get a prompt with Yes and No options. Also, there is a text as
Publisher - Google, Inc. So, this the signature of the publisher which confirms that this program is created by Google itself. So, now antivirus looks into this signature and verifies the program. If there is a program by an unknown publisher, then antivirus gives more attention towards the file and effectively starts looking its activity through its other services. This service alarms the other services of the antivirus like Behavior Detection, Real-Time Monitoring service that this program may be suspicious and then other services starts looking into the program with more intention.
Now this was all about how does an Antivirus Software works. Also there are other technologies used by these software but which I had described are the most basic function of the antivirus program.
Which Antivirus Software to buy?
I would never recommend you to use free and pirated antivirus software because often they are not protecting you but harming your PC. So which one to buy? I recommend paid antivirus software like Kaspersky, BitDefender or Norton Security. Just install any one of them and feel free. They will do all the tasks and will help you to be protected in an online world.