Problems And Holes In Antivirus Software Is Your Windows PC Safe?

37,000 new malicious viruses were developed each day in 2008 alone!

A virus infection doesn t just cause data loss, it costs you time as well. It takes time to recreate files, re install corrupted software, and get your computer back to the way it should be.

Antivirus software makers are constantly playing catch up. Their Some Tips For Acne Treatment at Home antivirus software or antivirus firewall products do a good job, but they often leave you hanging when Exercise Treadmill Reviews and Ratings you most need the help, which is when a virus or malware Evening Shawls: How to Wear For Different Body Types slips past their software and damages your computer.

In this article, I want to tell you about a method you can use to add extra protection to your Windows computer. Especially with Windows 7 coming to market, you can expect a brand new batch of viruses and malware designed to destroy your Windows based computer.

First, let me The Benefits Of Wooden Window Coverings give you a little background on malware Federated Identity Models to Form the Future of Secure Online e-Government Service Access and free antivirus software and Delicious: Emily's Hopes And Fears Collector's Edition commercial antivirus software.

MALWARE

Computer pros have many different names for software that damages your computer, depending on exactly how it does its dirty work. In this article, I will simplify things by using one word for software that damages your computer: Malware. Malware is MALicious SoftWARE.

ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE, YOUR FIRST Cash4novices: Finally Make Money from Residence . LINE OF DEFENSE

By using antivirus software, you ve taken an important step towards protecting yourself from losing valuable time and money to a malware infection! But you can easily do more.

The first thing you can do is educate yourself about what antivirus software can and can t do for you. Antivirus software works by monitoring your computer s activity and checking for malware whenever you do one of the following things: Receive or open an email; Send an email; Open a web page; Open a file.

Whenever antivirus software sees malware in an email, a web page, or a file, it prevents that malware from harming the computer, if possible. Antivirus software has two basic ways of recognizing malware:

1.Using a large list of known malware. This is like the FBI s Most Wanted list. It lists known malware, and when the antivirus software sees an email, web page or file that matches the mugshot of a known piece of malware, the antivirus software tries to block the malware from causing harm.

2.Looking for web pages, emails, and files that act like malware. This is like the profiling that the FBI does when looking for a criminal. They look for people who act like the perpetrator, even if that person isn t currently committing a crime. With this method, antivirus software looks for software that has sneaky behavior, just like malware would.

The problem with method #1 is that new types of malware are constantly being created, at the rate of 37,000 per day! That s like a good sized American town, full of malware, cloning itself every day!

Virus software companies are constantly updating their list of malware. BUT, and that is a big BUT, this updating takes time! Every time a new piece of malware is put out in the wild on the Internet, several days p[censored] before the antivirus software makers can update their list of malware. And then, your virus software has to go grab this list from the software maker s web site, which can take more time.

In some cases, your computer can be unprotected for several days or weeks. Believe me, this is PLENTY of time for malware to do its dirty work.

A couple of computer braniacs did an experiment a Delicious: Emily's Hopes And Fears Collector's Edition year or two ago. They set up a Microsoft Windows XP computer with no antivirus software or firewall or Windows Updates, and connected it to the Internet. It took 4 minutes for that computer to get infected by malware! Four minutes!!! That s like a skinny, underweight computer nerd (hey, that s me!) getting in the ring with Mike Tyson in his heyday. It s just not fair! Read on and I ll show you how to even the odds.

Antivirus software makers have tried to fix the shortcomings of method #1 (the FBI Most Wanted method) with method #2:

With method #2 (The FBI Profiling method), if some malware is new and not on the Most Wanted list yet, there s still a chance that the antivirus software will catch it because of how that malware acts. Sounds Delicious: Emily's Hopes And Fears Collector's Edition pretty good right? Sounds like the antivirus software makers have covered all the bases, right? Well, read on and see Delicious: Emily's Hopes And Fears Collector's Edition what can go wrong, even with these two methods trying to protect you.

There are several ways antivirus software can FAIL to catch malware:

1) The malware is new, and the antivirus software doesn t recognize it.

2) You made a mistake configuring the antivirus software (have you SEEN how many options most antivirus software has?! It s really easy to make a configuration mistake.)

3) The antivirus software was turned off, either accidentally or on purpose.

4) The antivirus software is not very good at its job.

VIRTUAL MACHINES, YOUR ULTIMATE DEFENSE

There s a really easy way to add a second Delicious: Emily's Hopes And Fears Collector's Edition layer of defense to your Windows computer to beef up the protection provided by your antivirus software, your antivirus firewall, or your free antivirus solution.

You can create a virtual machine on your computer. The virtual machine DVR And A Review Of The Service From DirecTV is like those containers that bomb squads use to detonate bombs. They re not *completely* indestructible, but if anything bad happens inside of one, it *contains the damage*.

If you set up a virtual machine on your Windows computer, and then use that virtual machine for surfing the web or accessing email, your computer will be much more protected against viruses and malware!

Also, if a virus or malware does happen to sneak past your defenses, it will only contaminate the virtual machine. Virtual machines also give you something else: A Big, Fat, Giant Undo button for your PC!

You can use something called virtual machine snapshots to erase any damage that malware could possibly cause to your virtual machine.

LEARN MORE

Please check out my site to learn more on this subject. You can easily take what I ve given you here and dramatically increase your Windows PC s resistance to malware, but I can walk you through the process, step by step, and show you the best free software to use.