Computers are all around us in our lives, from helping us play and work to monitoring patients in hospitals as well as controlling crucial manufacturing processes. But this convenience comes with some drawbacks, since more computers are a bigger threat to malicious coders.

Antivirus protection scans files and programs to detect potential threats. It serves as a real-time defense against cyber-attacks. It detects infected programs and files based on their distinctive sign – two lines of assembly code that overwrites the stack pointer for instance – and compares them with a database of known malicious software. If the program is found to match the antivirus software, it blocks it from running or shifts the program to quarantine so that it can be thoroughly scanned and analyzed.

Unfortunately, malicious software creators are constantly releasing new programs with distinct and subtle signatures, and antivirus programs need to keep updating their databases. The good news is that once a virus is recognized and added to the database of detection it becomes harder for hackers to use the same signature against other computers.

That’s why good antivirus programs come with many additional features to protect website link against a broader range of malware threats. These include: