Computers are all around us. They help us play and work, supervise patients in hospitals, and regulate critical manufacturing processes. This ease of use has a drawback since more devices that use computers are a target for malicious coders.

Antivirus protection scans programs and files to identify potential threats. It acts as a real-time protection against cyber-attacks. It detects infected programs and files using a distinct sign – two lines or assembly code overwriting the stack pointer, for instance and compares them against a database of http://avastantivirusinfo.com/secure-tech-innovations-for-sensitive-data-sharing-control known malicious software. If the program is found to match the antivirus software, it blocks it from running and moves it to quarantine so that it can be thoroughly examined and scanned.

Unfortunately, malware creators continually create new programs that have subtler and different telltale signatures. Antivirus programs need to update their databases. Once a virus has been detected and added to the database of detection hackers will have a harder time to use the same signature on other machines.

This is why the majority of reliable antivirus programs have several additional features to guard against a broader range of malware threats. These include: