Types of Antivirus & Increasing its Effectiveness

Nowadays no one doubts the importance of having a reliable and updated antivirus that protects your computer from possible attacks, but depending on what type of antivirus you have installed on your computer, you will have better or worse security.

In this article you will verify that there are many types of antivirus and to show you, we are going to classify them according to different criteria such as: their purpose, according to whether they are created to meet a specific objective, according to how they are executed and according to their brand.

What types of antivirus are there?

Types of antivirus according to their purpose

·         Preventive antivirus

They are characterized because they analyze the input and output of all the data on your computer in order to intercept possible threats, anticipating the infection of the computer by malicious programs. They are installed in the internal memory of the computer and can sometimes slow down its operation.

·         Antivirus identifiers

As their name suggests, they are antivirus that scan your computer's operating system in order to identify possible viruses that exist on it. They track byte sequences of specific codes and try to identify strange behavior or out-of-the-ordinary patterns within existing programs.

·         Decontaminating antivirus

When the virus is already identified on our computer, the decontaminator type antivirus is in charge of eliminating this infection. It has some similar functions to identifier antivirus.

Types of antivirus according to your specific objective

Not all antivirus are designed to fight the same type of virus, so it is important that you identify the types of antivirus that exist according to their specific objective:

·         Firewall or firewall

The firewall (firewall in Spanish) controls the entry and exit of data from your computer and blocks "like a wall" all that activity that is doubtful to it . Act preventively. Currently we can identify 3 different types of firewall: proxy servers, network layer (or packet) filters, and application layer firewalls.

·         Antipop-up

This is a very simple antivirus that is only responsible for preventing some websites from automatically opening emerging advantages that may be annoying when browsing the Internet.

·         Antispyware or antispyware

This antivirus has the objective of detecting and eliminating spy programs that have been installed on our computer without our consent. The purpose of these malicious and silent spy programs is to collect information about the user (passwords, browsing habits, etc.) to pass it on illegally to third parties.

·         Antispam

Its specific objective is to identify emails of dubious origin and send them directly to the spam tray. Virtually all email service providers, such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. they have their own antispam systems.

·         Antimalware

The antimalware are designed to analyze, detect, prevent and remove malicious software on our computers, i.e. malware. It is not a simple tool (as an anti-pop-up can be), but it is a more complete program that normally already incorporates several of the anti-virus functions mentioned in this list.

Types of antivirus according to its execution

According to this classification we can find:

·         Online antivirus and offline antivirus

Those entire antiviruses that do not need to be installed on your computer, but that act only through the Internet are classified as online antivirus. If they do not require the Internet to be executable, they are offline antivirus.

·         Passive antivirus and active antivirus

If the antivirus only acts when the user requests it, then we are talking about a passive antivirus. On the contrary, if the antivirus acts autonomously without the need for the user to give it a specific order, then we are talking about an active type antivirus.

There are many security programs and tools that we can use on our devices to protect our systems and privacy. But undoubtedly the most popular are antivirus. There are free and paid ones. They are available for all types of platforms and operating systems. Some, of course, may work better than others. Therefore, this issue must be taken seriously when choosing an option. In this article we are going to explain how an antivirus works and what we can do to make it work better.

How an antivirus works

As we know, an antivirus has the main objective of detecting and eliminating possible threats . There are many types of viruses, Trojans and other types of malware that can compromise the proper functioning of the system. What this type of software does is protect us, prevent information theft and prevent the entry of malicious programs.

Basically we can say that an antivirus uses a database to detect malware. A signature database, which is how it is known to identify threats, offered by the manufacturer. This is what helps prevent the entry of viruses, Trojans and other known threats.

What about this? As we can suspect, if you try to enter a threat that is not available in that database, it will not be detected by the antivirus. For this reason, not all antivirus are the same, since it depends mainly on its database.

Luckily the antivirus has been improving over time. They no longer require as much of a database. Modern antivirus products have a more efficient active protection capable of detecting threats that do not yet have a signature and, therefore, will not be in the database.

In this case, what it does is use a series of algorithms that determine whether or not a file may represent a threat. It takes into account things like whether you can edit the registry or remotely connect to another computer.

How to make antivirus more effective

We have basically seen how an antivirus works. However, they do not always act in the correct way and not all of them are capable of protecting us in the same way. The first thing to keep in mind when trying to make your antivirus work better is to always keep it updated . So we can have a database that can detect the latest threats and also has the new functions to protect us.

On the other hand, keep in mind that free antivirus programs usually lack all functions. Some only detect and cannot eliminate the problem, for example. It is important that in this sense we choose an antivirus with guarantees. We leave you an article with the best antivirus for Windows 10 of the moment.

It is also important not to have more than one antivirus installed. The reason is because it could cause compatibility problems and affect performance. In short, an antivirus is a fundamental piece to maintain security. It is important to take care of it and always keep it updated