A firewall is like a guard that allows or prohibits intruders to the network. It has a control policy that indicates and dictates what should be denied and permitted to access the network in order to protect the network from any harm. It is a preventive measure and not completely the solution to viruses or any harmful things that can be acquired in the internet. It is designed to protect and not to heal infected data. Firewall is not able to do that. Unlike anti-virus software, it updates and scans the memory or programs when you reboot your computer. During the reboot, it can detect whether there are viruses, the location of the viruses and eventually cure it. Anti-virus software is designed for the purpose of healing and detecting harmful virus on your computer. In other words, even if the viruses had infected some parts of the data saved in your computer, it is still capable of adjusting allowing its features to cure the infected area. Compared to a firewall, it is designed only to protect and guard the network due to its control policy.
Virus is a threat that is contagious for it infects your files as well as other programs installed on your computer. A computer virus should be attached on top of other program or document in order to launch. Once it is running, it will now start the onset of infecting other programs or documents. Maybe a lot of computer users would ask about from whom or where does computer virus come from? Well sadly, it comes from computer users also. These people write the computer virus in which he or she is required to write the code, put it to a test to be assured that if it will infects a program, it will run and spreads properly. If the test is successful, that person will release the virus. There are various reasons as to why some people make computer viruses:
1. For them, making unusual things such as making computer virus gives them thrill or excitement to boast that he or she knows much about computer programs to the extent that he or she may channel energy in creating destructive viruses.
2. Fascination pushes a person to make a computer virus in the sense that when the virus is already released, he or she would sit back and enjoy the scenario as things blow up with somebody’s computer.
3. Curiosity also is one of the components as to why some people are interested to make destructive viruses. One wants to exploit things first before others would. It’s like grabbing the opportunity to test something dreadful and see how masses would react.
Computer virus creators are overlooking the fact that they can cause real damage not only to hard disks of the computer, but with real people who are not aware about such things.
An internet firewall is a system or cluster of system that enforces an access control policy between two or more networks. Firewall can be a pair of mechanism in which one performs blockage and the other is permission. As said in above statement, firewall enforces an access control policy in which it depends on it of what kind of access to be allowed or denied. If you have a good idea about what access to be denied and allowed, firewall will be useful. Firewall has configuration which should be updated and given emphasis to enforce the policy. The importance of a firewall is that it protects you from being intruded or keeping out bad ‘stuffs’ out of your network while doing or finishing your job. Firewall is often used by huge corporations for the purpose of protecting the data about corporate products and services or files to download and the like. Firewall is like a preventive measure that guards your network from any harmful ‘stuffs’ that can corrupt important data.
Installing software that screens out viruses on your computer is an edge to protect your data or files from being infected of some viruses which can cause computer crash loosing now all important files that are saved on your computer. At the most fundamental sense, anti-virus software is the first line of defense of your computer system in order to maintain the intactness of its programs and other saved data. In buying or choosing reliable anti-virus software, here are some guidelines:
1. Automatic Updates. It should have an automatic updates wherein every time you will turn on, boot or reboot your computer, the anti-virus software will at the same time be running to scan different vaults to search any virus.
2. Ability to Detect. The anti-virus software should have a feature in which it can easily detect virus and provide any warning icon as a signal that a certain virus has intruded the system of your network. In this manner, it will be easy for the computer and anti-virus user to heal of cure the infected area reducing now the possibility of spreading it out contaminating other data or programs.
3. Set up. The anti-virus should include easy set up for the user to be at his or her convenient in utilizing the anti-virus.
By having any anti-virus installed on your computer, you are allowing your computer files and programs to be protected from any harm that a certain virus can do. But like any other virus, it is still best to prevent it than curing it. Being meticulously selective in downloading files from the internet is still the best way to prevent virus from intruding your system. Here are some tips to avoid or prevent computer virus.
1. Use an internet firewall
2. Subscribe to industry standard anti-virus software
3. Never open an e-mail attachment from someone you don’t know.
4. Avoid opening an e-mail attachment from someone you know, unless you know exactly what the attachment is. The sender may be unaware that it contains a virus.
A computer virus is actually a program that infects other programs with its own copy. The virus replicates itself from disk to another disk or system to another system through computer networking. The role of the virus is to perform and does its damage if the program has been infected already. Moreover, the system will also be susceptible to other types of destructive programs that are not classified as virus, instead it is termed as spy wares. Computer viruses are harmless depending on its content. At the same the virus may be considerable harmful if it does damages by destroying boot records, file tables and important data on disk. Backing up important files is a must to prevent from losing all of it due to a virus that spreads on your system, thus, infecting all of the important data stored or saved on your computer’s memory.
Now even portable music players may get viruses as well. According to the Kaspersky Lab website, they have discovered a virus, named Podloso which behaves in this manner:
If the virus is installed on the iPod by the user, the virus then installs itself to the folder which contains program demo versions. Podloso cannot be launched automatically without user involvement.
Once launched, the virus scans the device’s hard disk and infects all executable .elf format files. Any attempt to launch these files will cause the virus to display a message on the screen which says “You are infected with Oslo the first iPodLinux Virus”.
Fortunately, this is only a “proof of concept” virus, which is created for the sole purpose of proving that it is possible to infect a specific platform, and it does not spread on its own; the user has to install Linux on the iPod and save the virus to the iPod for the device to become infected.
There are many anti virus to choose from, whether it is free of charge or with charge. Mushrooming of anti virus helps people to have it installed in their computers to help them update it, but what is the edge of having it installed? One of my cousins asked me why her internet connection is way too slow together with the booting of her computer. I ask her about how much her computer’s memory is. There is no problem about the memory, because it is sufficient. So I consider asking about the internet connection, and it is one of the internet providers that allow highest speed of loading. The last thing I considered to ask is anti-virus system. I ask her if is there any anti-virus installed in her computer. She said no, with that answer, it gave me the idea that maybe there are a lot of viruses attached to her computer that slows the functioning of the internet as well as the booting or loading of her desktop unit.
Having anti-virus software installed on your computer gives you the opportunity to update the vaults of your computer locating now infected areas wherein viruses are attached. It can heal or treat the infected area emptying the vault crammed with virus. It also allows you to be at ease in downloading stuffs from the internet. Anti-virus scans the computer even the hardware such as flash drives that maybe infected by a virus, at the same time healing it if virus is present before making access.
Viruses are no longer confined to your desktop PC and laptop. Recently they have spread to mobile devices as well, since mobile handsets now have a variety of interfaces and data connection capabilities.
Antivirus vendors are beginning to offer solutions for mobile handsets. However it is wise to review anything first before installing it on your handheld, as the scanning process might impact other legitimate applications on the handheld. A good solution is USB and Flash memory-based solutions as they will give you the flexibility of swapping and using these products with a range of hardware devices, not just one unit.
Still stupefied as to what anti-virus program to buy and install? Here is a good test which shows you, side-by-side, the popular anti-virus software and how well they performed based on each of the following criteria, among others:
- Detection of malware samples
- Detection of ad- and spyware
- False positives
- Performance/speed
- Proactive detection of new, unknown malware
Not surprisingly, the winners were AntiVir (Avira), F-Secure, Ikarus, McAfee, Norton (Symantec), Panda, Rising, Sophos, and TrendMicro.
