Virus protection and Firewalls how and why they are used

Virus protection – a virus is a program or a piece of code loaded into your computer without you knowing. All computer viruses are manmade. A simple virus will make copies of the file over and over again. A simple virus is dangerous too it will use all available memory on your computer. The virus will destroy your computer, when there is a virus on your computer your computer will be slow. The virus that is more dangerous will spread from one network to another.

Trojan horse and worm are similar to viruses. Trojan horse disguises itself as another program, the programs are hidden an cause an unwanted effect. Trojan horse is different to viruses it s not designed to replicate like a virus. The software will be doing something normal, but actually the programs contains an attack program. Worm is a computer program which replicates itself. It spreads from one network to another. Worm is designed to destroy your computer, it causes damages to the host computer or attacking a third party computer. Worms are similar to viruses. The difference between virus and worm is that virus is a stand alone program which doesn’t hide in another program.

To stop the viruses from damaging your computer you should install an anti virus in your computer. The anti virus will protect you from viruses and when the is a virus the anti virus will destroy the virus. The software will need to be updated, when its updated the new version would be better it will have more features. If the software isn’t updated the software will detect the old viruses but it wont detect the new viruses.

Firewalls – firewall is a hardware and software which prevents communications prohibited by the security policy in a computer network. Firewall is used to give a users a secure access to the internet. Using a firewall is a good way of protecting personal information from being exposed to others. The firewall stops private and confidential information from being exposed to others and it stops viruses from entering the computer system.

A firewall protects our computers by putting up a barrier to keep anyone from accessing our files when we are surfing the on Internet. It protects networked computers from deliberate hostile invasion that could result in data corruption or denial of service and exposure of confidential data stored on the system.

Software versions are cheaper then the hardware type. It is installed into your computer to protect your computer from internet hazards. The three common internet hazards are:
• Remote login – allows someone to connect to your computer and control it
• Back doors – programs and operating systems have features that allow for remote access
• SMTP – takes over your mail list and sends out spam using your computer