Basics of an Anti-Virus Program

Posted by: rrichar2 on September 1, 2011Tags: anti-virus, setup, sophos

Be sure your virus protection program is up to date. Also, each virus protection program relies on virus definition files to check for viruses. These definition files are updated weekly, sometimes daily. Be sure yours are up to date by using the automatic update feature of your virus protection software. That way the program will go out to the web periodically to check for new definition files.

The preferences in your virus protection program must be set properly. Different programs have different places to set the preferences, but the main ideas are:

1. Scan all files, including zipped files, scan subfolders and boot sectors.
2. Disinfect infected files, not just notify you that a file is infected.
3. Have active or dynamic file protection selected ON. This will scan all new files BEFORE they are opened to release the deadly virus.