Viruses

Viruses are everywhere. If a computer is connected to the internet or any outside network, the risk of a virus infection is always present. Anti-Virus protection is designed to detect existing viruses / spyware and remove them, as well as preventing new ones from entering into the system.

What are the different types of viruses?

• Viruses
  General viruses are intended to either cause malicious damage to files and information, or to make their presence known through text and graphics that appear from time to time. Like worms, they can attach themselves to an existing file, and are then spread through the internet or a system networks.
• Worms
  A worm is a self-replicating program that will continually spread throughout a network (or over the internet) without needing to be attached to an existing program (as in a virus). These do not usually cause harm to files and disks, but consume bandwidth as they spread onto as many machines as possible.
• Trojans
  A trojan (also known as a trojan horse) is a piece of software that appears to perform a certain action, but in reality does something completely different (such as infecting files). Unlike worms, these don’t self-replicate, but rely on the user to execute the program itself. It is named after the giant wooden horse used to carry soldiers hidden inside during the Greek Trojan War.

How does Anti-Virus software protect against viruses?
There are two types of anti-virus protection, server-side and client-side.

Server-side consists of a rigorous software program that catches, cleans and prevents viruses at the actual server stage. Given it is kept up-to-date and is reliable, there is very little chance any viruses will find their way through this and hence all desktops using the server will be protected.

Client-side involves anti-virus programs installed on a computer system, that actively protects it against any new viruses, and cleans any existing viruses.