How to Protect Our PC using Antivirus

 

How to Protect Our PC using Antivirus

In this article we analyze the most common types of attacks that we face daily on the web and some recommendations to avoid them. We often wonder what we can do about each of the threats found on the Internet. Threats to our security are not solved by a single program, however sophisticated and complete it may seem, although there are security suites that bring together various protection modes for our equipment such as antivirus, firewall, Web content control, antispyware etc. Among the most widely used and recognized security suites are those from Norton, MacAfee, Panda and Kaspersky . Actually, the issue of security is something that not only depends on all the programs that? our team, but also ourselves. Here the human factor (or common sense) is as important as the security strategies that we implement with the appropriate programs. Next I am going to describe what we should all have installed on our computers to be able to use our PC and navigate much safer, although it must also be said that no matter how much we protect ourselves, any security system is susceptible to being vulnerable:

1. Antivirus.

Viruses are programs that enter our computers in many different ways and that can produce unwanted and harmful effects. Once the virus has entered the computer, it will be placed in places where the user can unintentionally execute them, since for the virus to act, the infected program must be executed or a certain condition must be met. This is why on some occasions, the effects produced by a virus are appreciated long after its execution.

The most common means of entry for viruses are:

1. Removable disk drives (floppy disks, CD-ROM, ZIP drives, pen drives etc.)

2. Internet (browsing, via email, when downloading files etc.)

3. A computer network of a company in which files of all kinds are shared, which if infected, can end up spreading to all the computers on the network.

The files most susceptible to infection are those found on a storage medium such as hard drives or floppy disks. More specifically, all files, files or documents that have the characteristic of being programs will be infected. Although these are the most normal, there are also viruses that are responsible for infecting files that are not programs, such as files that contain macros. These macros are programs that the user can include within a certain type of file and that allow the execution of other programs or other commands that can be lethal to our computer.

Due to all this, an antivirus is the defensive system against viruses, worms, Trojans and other threats par excellence. Today a computer without antivirus or one that is not updated is exposed to all kinds of attacks whose disastrous results range from the loss of vital data to the spying of everything we do with it. Having an antivirus has become essential for our team, especially if we speak at a business level, although it is being used more and more on a personal level, since the cost of an antivirus is not comparable to what the recover data lost due to a virus.

There is a wide range of antivirus models to choose from, and the prices are very attractive due to the competition. In addition to paid antivirus, there are many other free antivirus, which, although they will not have as extensive a virus database as the others, offer excellent protection against many of the viruses that circulate on the network.
In any case, whether we choose a professional antivirus or a free one, the important thing is that our computer has one of these programs, since it will always be better than not having any protection system. We will be even safer under the surveillance of two antivirus, although before venturing, we must inform ourselves of the incompatibilities of some brands with others.

What we should never do is have more than one active antivirus, since we could have serious security problems and even hang the computer.

These are some addresses of antivirus programs where we can analyze our equipment online, test them, and if we are satisfied to buy them:

·         Protegent Antivirus Software

·         Bit Defender

·         Kaspersky

·         Norton

·         MacAfee

·         AVG Antivirus

2. A Firewall or Firewall.

When a computer accesses the Internet, it communicates through "doors" called connection ports. There are 65,535 channels through which data can enter or leave our computer, so that someone can attempt an intrusion through any of those ports. In reality, intrusion is not that easy because if we try to access a computer through a port and it is not listening, it will be impossible. But Windows opens by default several ports that leave our computers very vulnerable. A good firewall should close all ports that are not in use and prevent any connection through them. This greatly guarantees our safety.
Contrary to anti-virus guidelines, two firewalls should never be installed at the same time. Interference between the two can cause unintentional port openings that would make our computer more insecure. Two examples of good firewalls are ZoneAlarm and Tiny, in addition to the Norton, Panda, and MacAfee mentioned above. 

Operation of a Firewall

A firewall consists of a software or hardware-based mechanism that is placed between two networks, usually between a LAN and the Internet, and that allows certain connections and blocks others by following previously configured rules. Firewalls, as I mentioned before, can be a special program that is installed on a PC, or a hardware device that performs this function or that can even be implemented in certain devices such as routers.
Personal firewalls like Zone Alarm, Tiny or Black ICE, are Firewalls based on Software but that only protect the machine that has it installed. They are designed for small networks or individual users. On a personal level or for a small organization, if these programs are complemented with other types of software such as antivirus, we would achieve a more than acceptable level of security.

They all really have the same purpose, which is to block certain types of network traffic that are considered inappropriate. Despite this, there are two ways to block this traffic, filtering at the network layer or at the application layer:

1. A network layer firewall filters packets based on predefined rules that indicate destination or source addresses and a port number.

2. An application-based firewall acts as a Proxy and prevents traffic between two networks but allows certain applications inside the network to be accessible to certain outside software.

If we want to see a working Firewall, in this link there is a video that shows how the network works and how the Firewall accepts or rejects the packets that arrive according to the rules.

3. An Antispyware

Spyware is spyware created in order to collect information from the user who has it installed and, in most cases, without this user being aware of what is happening.
There are several types of spyware, so we can call them according to the function that their malicious code performs:                      

- Adware : they open windows (pop-ups) in which advertising is displayed while we run applications.

- Spyware : small program that is installed on our computer to steal our data and spy on our movements through the network, collecting data on the websites we visit.

- Hijackers : program that redirects the Internet browser to pages of your choice ?? hijacking ?? the home page or search page of our browser.

- Dialers : program capable of modifying the telephone number with which we connect to our ISP (Internet Service Provider) so that we can call an additional rate number at the cost that this entails. (906; 806; 807; etc).

Some are installed automatically without our consent, they are not classified as viruses but they invade our privacy and in most cases endanger the stability of the system and especially the operation of the browser or email client, and may even collect information about us and our PC. Others are installed when we download extras for our browser such as toolbars (additional toolbars). There are certain programs that can collect information on our browsing habits to compile complex consumption statistics, usually for commercial purposes.
The solution to get rid of those programs that we sometimes pick up unintentionally when we install a freeware program is to install antispyware on our computer.

There are some antivirus on the market that also detect and eliminate those spyware programs, such as per Antivirus Software, which, in addition to updating its virus database, also updates it with spyware and adware, giving us the option to eliminate them if we wish. There are many programs that eliminate spyware, many of them specific to some of them, but the ideal is to complement our antivirus with an anti-spyware program such as Ad-aware or SpyBot Search & DestroyIt would even be convenient to have both installed, since there are times when what one is not capable of eliminating, the other can, also they do not cause problems with each other as happened with antivirus and its interface can be put in Spanish.

4. A program to remove fingerprints on the Internet.

To get information from our computers, it is not necessary to install any spyware, simply by visiting certain websites that have Java, JavaScript, or other languages ​​like these in their code that have very powerful tools to know our data.

Among other things, they can obtain data such as our IP, the type of browser we use, the operating system we have, our email addresses, how many pages we have visited before reaching the page that spies on us, the address of at least the last of these pages, the number of secret key bits for encryption using SSL (a protocol that enables the encrypted and secure transmission of information over the network), the type of monitor you use, the name of the computer, if it belongs to a corporate network or not, etc.

If they know our email, they can use it to send us spam (unsolicited advertising) in bulk. In addition, many users match their email address or the name of their PC with their real name, so that in this way they could get to know our address, telephone number etc.

Some pages have been able to obtain passwords and other relevant data simply by stealing Cookies (text document in which our preferences on certain websites and on the connection are stored) stored on our hard drive.

To avoid all this, it is convenient to navigate through a Proxy or with a specific program that prevents all this. If we use a Proxy, we can have problems because they are very unstable, they slow down connections and sometimes we will not have the necessary permissions to use them. One option could be to use a browsing anonymizer like Anonymizer. This program is paid, although we can use it in its free version, but we will be very limited because there will be pages that we cannot access. Another very interesting program to navigate safely is Proxomitron, which eliminates malicious HTML code, preventing, among other things, the appearance of annoying pop-up windows, the execution of worms via the Web, and best of all, it does not need to be installed, so it will not touch anything in the configuration of our computer nor the registry.

5. A Program That Monitors the Ports.

When we access the Internet on our computer, connections with the outside are opened, and these in turn are established through a specific port each. Knowing the ports of each application, we can notice any anomaly immediately, because when we get infected with a Trojan, it should open its corresponding port and we would know it because the program that monitors the ports would warn us. In this link, we can see a list of ports in which they explain how to know if we have a Trojan on our computer and a list of the ports most used by Trojans. (Antivirus Software). These programs can show us the attacker's IP, in order to prevent our computer from connecting to that address through firewall rules or in this same program. We could also know where the servers of the Web pages we visit are located and the type of connection they establish with our computers, with which we would have practically 100% of the Internet traffic controlled.