The Importance of an Antivirus

By Michael Byarugaba

What is an Antivirus?
Antivirus software is a program or set of programs that are designed to prevent, search for, detect, and remove software viruses, and other malicious software like worms, trojans, adware, and more.  Some examples of anti virus software include McAfee, Norton, and Kaspersky.

Why it’s important?
It is important to have antivirus software installed because it is as crucial as a PC’s operating system. Even if you’re well aware of potential threats and practice extreme caution, some threats just can’t be prevented without the extra help of an AV program—or a full antivirus suite.

There are times when we  accidentally visit a website that displays malicious adverts. We can click on a phishing email which comes with malicious malware. This scams are very enticing and can get you hooked because they come with a great sense of reality. Often times, the threats may infiltrate in a form of an undisclosed bug in Windows, your browser e.g Chrome, Firefox etc, or a program that you install gives hackers entry to your computer. Sites that can be embedded with malicious code are those that aren’t secure are http, while the secure site is http(s) where (s) stands for a secure socket layer, on the url it has a padlock sign.

Computer security software like windows defender is not secure enough but atleast helps with some level of defense. Many antivirus software often can’t do much to stop everyday exploits but it can detect when the undisclosed vulnerability or virus is being used to install many virus types like ransomware on your computer.

Anyone who actively uses email and clicks on links to download programs, documents as well as other formats will benefit from an antivirus suite.

My advice is to strike a balance between excellent protection and a worthwhile selection of features that have minimal impact on your computer’s performance. You can read about how to test antivirus suites by clicking on the link below 

https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2496675,00.asp

Consequences of not having antivirus protection

• Lost data
• Lost time
• Costs
• Server Hijacking

NB. Always Backup your information, data is critical lest anything bad happens.

For any inquiries please email at helpme@dicts.mak.ac.ug