New software scanners that mimic hacker attacks can help you find out. New sources for security training and education are helping agencies close the skills gap. IPSec defined Antivirus software covers the perimeter Once focused mainly on the desktop, antivirus software is being moved to the edge of the network to catch viruses before they breach agency walls. A computer virus is a program a piece of executable code that can replicate itself. Viruses can spread quickly by attaching themselves to most other types of files and moving from user to user.
Viruses can destroy files, reformat or destroy a hard drive and cause other types of damage.
Antivirus technology works by extracting a short sequence of bytes from the body of a known virus and maintaining a database of these signatures, or fingerprints. Each virus has a different signature, and antivirus software searches for these signatures in every program on a computer. This signature scanning method of virus detection has high rates of success of detecting known viruses, but it cannot detect a new virus because its signature is not stored in the database. So many antivirus vendors have developed heuristic technology, which is designed to detect a virus by analyzing a program s structure and behavior as opposed to its signature. Each time a heuristic product scans a file, it scrutinizes these characteristics and makes an assessment of the likelihood that the program is infected with a virus.