Computer Virus Protection Viruses pose great security risks. By the way they replicate and deliver their payload they represent one of the greatest risks online, so at the very least have basic computer virus protection software onboard to protect your machine from harm. You might say there are viruses that do not really do anything harmful. Their sole presence is a sign of weakness and creates a security hole that can be exploited by other malicious programs. Never presume a virus is harmless. There are viruses that simply infiltrate your computer and wait in silence for a trigger. The trigger might be a predetermined date and hour. At that date and hour, your apparently friendly virus will erase your entire hard drive. How does this sound? To make sure nothing bad happens to our computers, we must make sure no virus will ever be allowed to infiltrate it. How do we do this? We do it by looking carefully at computer virus protection options available to us and implementing some basic security rules and policies. Antivirus software Antivirus software; its name clearly suggests what it is and what it does: detect and remove any kind of computer virus from your computer. This is our second line of defense against these malicious pieces of code. We are talking about it first because it is the most suggestive and easy to implement computer virus protection. All you have to do to begin is buy a good antivirus and install it. There are a lot of great tools on the World Wide Web, like Avast, BitDefender,AVG, Nod32, ZoneAlarm, and Kaspersky. All you have to do is find the one suited for you. Once you find and install your antivirus, it is time to strengthen it for best PC virus protection. You do this by updating the virus signature database. Almost all of these tools have automatic updates. Turn them on and allow the antivirus to update whenever it requires. This helps these amazing tools stay in touch with the latest trends in virus creation, detect, and remove any threat. Firewall software Firewall software is a must for good computer virus protection as this is the first line of defense against computer viruses. A firewall is basically a tool that closes most of your computer’s ports. Whenever something attempts to connect to or from your computer, the software will first appreciate whether it is or is not illegal. If it is, it will deny it. If the firewall is unsure, it will ask you what to do. Never allow any connection your see! Read first, take action after! Just like the antivirus software, firewall software must be updated frequently to make sure it recognizes any type of threat. A good firewall will block all incoming viruses and the antivirus will stay idle most of the time. Backup Backup is essential! This should be a major part of your computer virus protection strategy. Let’s presume a virus manages to slip through our security suite. It will first replicate and then deliver its payload. Let’s presume it erases the hard disk. Since you need most of the data back, you will look through your backups to find the most recent one. You realize it is a year old. This is why you must perform frequent backups! Email policies Whenever you receive a mail containing an attachment, you are in serious risk. If you open the package, the firewall is useless because the connection is legit. If the antivirus does not see the threat or does not act in time, the bomb is ticking! So a serious computer virus protection strategy is to always delete suspect emails without opening the attachment. Also, remember to turn off the “preview pane” in your email client. If the client shows the contents of the attachment, even without your request, the connection is still legit and the virus is released.