Understand Antivirus Software

About antivirus software

What is antivirus software? - In order to explain antivirus software it is necessary to understand the nature of a computer virus... [Read More]

The future of antivirus - Unfortunately, because new viruses are being developed every day there will always be a need for up-to-date antivirus protection. Furthermore, these viruses are becoming increasingly complex and difficult to discover, and as a result the growth in virus attacks is set to continue... [Read More]

Why antivirus - A return on investment is difficult to calculate for antivirus software because, once installed, it will not immediately decrease costs or improve efficiency... [Read More]

Types of viruses - A worm is a piece of malicious software that can prevent certain functions of your PC from taking place. The way that worms are designed mean that they run in the background so that you won’t realise that they are there until you cannot carry out a particular function such as opening a word-processing document... [Read More]

Benefits of antivirus software - The key benefit of antivirus software is quite simply that it prevensts a virus damaging your PC or network... [Read More]

Disadvantages and potential pitfalls - Some antivirus packages can slow down the speed of your PC or network. Antivirus software can require a great deal of hard disk and memory... [Read More]

Download and Go! - If you don't have time to read the whole Understand section online you can download the content in our ebook as a pdf and read on the go.

Buying and installing antivirus software

Five steps to successfully buying antivirus software - Identify the needs of your organisation and your users. If users access the internet via a dedicated server, then only the server needs to have an antivirus package installed. You have to consider PC and laptop users with direct internet access... [Read More]

Simple steps to installing antivirus software - 1. Install the software on each server or PC that has access to the internet. It may not be necessary to install the software on other PCs if they access the internet via your main server... [Read More]

Antivirus case studies

Securing a Mid-size Business Network with Solutions from Symantec and AIS Delivers $98,000 in Annual Savings - Insurance Technologies, LLC needs to protect its intellectual property, as well as the data of the top-tier financial institutions that make up its client base. The firm turned to Symantec and Advanced Internet Security, Inc. for... [Read More - pdf]

Ensuring Safe, Secure, and Highly Available Customer Information with Symantec Information Integrity Solution - With a wealth of customer information that must be kept both secure and available, Farmers & Merchants Bank requires a resilient infrastructure. The bank turned to Symantec to deliver... [Read More - pdf]

Shielding Small Business with Symantec Security Protection - Hemenway Business Service needed to protect its systems, and the systems of the small businesses it serves, against viruses, spyware, and other intrusions. After beta testing... [Read More - pdf]

10 Steps to Corporate Security - A simple guide for your business...[Read More - pdf]

Questions and answers

What is a virus? - A virus is a piece of malicious code or a software programme that has been written with the specific intent of causing damage to a computer or a network... [Read More]

How does it work in practice? - A virus can be sent via an email or a document either from a friend, colleague or via a spurious email. The best advice about viruses is that if you don’t know who the person is that has sent you an email; do not open it or indeed any attachments or links within the email... [Read More]

Why do I need it? - Quite simply, if you don’t have an antivirus package you will (unless you are extremely lucky) at some point be affected. This can cause major issues not only on your PC but is quite easy to pass across your organisation’s network and potentially impact everybody... [Read More]

Is it something that I can install myself? - Yes, very much so. It is easy if you have just one PC but if your organisation has more than one and maybe a server, then it is important to install the software on those too. Generally speaking, you can download an antivirus package either from... [Read More]

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In summary about antivirus software

It is highly recommended that all organisations install an antivirus system. Without a doubt, most organisations with internet access will be susceptible to a virus attack – this is pretty much unavoidable. There are many excellent and different packages available but do make sure that they are capable of dealing with viruses and other malware.

Glossary

1. Network – A network allows computers to communicate with each other. There a number of ways from a technical perspective how this can be achieved but the most well known and biggest is the internet.

2. Downtime – Downtime is a term used for when a computer or network is either not working or unavailable.

3. Dedicated server – A dedicated server is one that can only be used by your company, i.e. it can not be shared by another organisation in a hosting environment. It can also be a server that can only be used, for example, for one application, such as storing email.