Understanding AntiVirus

ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE: A computer program designed to detect and respond to malicious software, such as viruses and worms. Responses may include blocking user access to infected files, cleaning infected files or systems, or informing the user that an infected program was detected.

 

Antivirus software is designed to keep your PC free of these computer viruses and worms, it does so by scanning your PC's file system looking for known viruses, if a virus is found it will inform you and then take steps to remove the virus threat.

Good antivirus software will automatically check any files being transferred to and from your computer, any antivirus software should at least scan attachments of incoming emails automatically (even if the option can be turned off).

 

 

 

When Antivirus was Borned

There are competing claims for the innovator of the first antivirus product. The first publicly known neutralization of a wild PC virus was performed by European Bernt Fix (also Bernd) in early 1987. Fix neutralized an infection of the Vienna virus.First edition of Polish antivirus software mks_vir started in 1987. Program was only available in Polish language version. Fall 1988 also saw antivirus software Dr. Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit released by Briton Alan Solomon. By December 1990 the market had matured to the point of nineteen separate antivirus products being on sale including Norton AntiVirus and ViruScan from McAfee.

Peter Tippett made a number of contributions to the budding field of virus detection.He was an emergency room doctor who also ran a computer software company. He had read an article about the Lehigh virus and questioned whether they would have similar characteristics to biological viruses that attack organisms. From an epidemiological viewpoint, he was able to determine how these viruses were affecting systems within the computer (the boot-sector was affected by the Brain virus, the .com files were affected by the Lehigh virus, and both .com and .exe files were affected by the Jerusalem virus). Tippett’s company Certus International Corp. then began to create anti-virus software programs. The company was sold in 1992 to Symantec Corp, and Tippett went to work for them, incorporating the software he had developed into Symantec’s product, Norton AntiVirus.

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