Anti-malware
- Anti-Malware (also known as Anti Virus software) is designed to protect devices against viruses and malicious software
- Anti-malware has 3 mains purposes, detect, prevent and remove malicious software
- Anti-Malware is installed onto a computer system and will operate in the background
- Common features of Anti-Malware software include the following:
- Comparing the scanned files against a large database of known threats
- Real-time scanning
- Regular updates to gather an up to date list of known threats
- Quarantine of infected files
- Quarantining files allows threats to be automatically deleted
- Allows the user to determine if the file is a legitimate threat and not a false positive
- Scanning external storage media such as USB flash drives to prevent viruses from being loaded onto the computer system
- The scanning of downloaded software to ensure that it is free from any threats
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- Heuristic checking
- This is the identification of potential threats within a file from behavioural patterns and characteristics rather than just relying on a database of known viruses
- Heuristic checking
Worked example
Give two examples of how Anti-Malware protects devices against malicious software
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Regular updates by the Anti-Malware software will keep an up to date list of threats [1]
If any of the threats are detected on the device, the Anti-Malware software will quarantine the files [1]
Anti-Malware software will scan external storage media when they are connected to the device [1]
Preventing viruses from being transferred from storage media onto the device [1]
