Methods of Prevention and Protection Against Computer Viruses | Antivirus

Methods of Prevention and Protection Against Computer Viruses


To protect against the penetration of viruses, it is necessary to take measures to exclude the infection of programs and data of the computer system.


The main sources of virus penetration  are:

• removable media (removable hard drives, flash memory, CDs and DVDs) containing virus-infected files;

• computer networks and their services, including the e-mail system and the World Wide Web;

• hard drives that have been infected by a virus as a result of working with infected programs;

• a virus that remained in RAM after a previous user had worked with infected programs.



To protect against computer viruses, it is necessary to use:

• general information protection tools, which are useful for protecting not only against viruses but also against physical damage to disks, improperly functioning programs or erroneous user actions;

• preventive measures to reduce the likelihood of contracting the virus;

• specialized programs for virus protection.


General means of protecting information  are divided into two main types:

1) means of copying information - making copies of files and system areas of disks;

2) means of access control - prevent unauthorized use of information (in particular, they provide protection against changes in programs and data by viruses).


As  preventive measures to protect against infection with computer viruses,  it is recommended to:

1) use modern operating systems that have a more serious level of protection against malicious programs;

2) timely install programs to eliminate errors in the OS and application programs, which are "loopholes" for viruses;

3) if there is an automatic OS update mode, then enable it to automatically download new patches;

4) constantly work on a computer exclusively with user rights, not an administrator;

5) use anti-virus software products of well-known manufacturers with automatic updating of anti-virus databases; 

6) use a personal firewall that controls access from a computer to the Internet and protects against information attacks from outside; 

7) restrict physical access to the computer for unauthorized persons;

8) use external media received only from verified persons; 

9) do not open computer files received from unreliable sources (for example, received as an attachment to an e-mail or downloaded from the Internet, without first checking them with an antivirus); 

10) disable autorun from removable media, which will prevent malicious programs from starting that were written there without the user's knowledge when these media were infected with viruses.


Of course, there is no one hundred per cent protection against all malicious programs, no one is immune to them. But the listed recommendations will help to significantly reduce the risk of losses from exposure to computer viruses.



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