In theory, once you have installed an antivirus program on a clean computer or on any computer and then cleaned it, you should never have to scan that system/device again. Why?
Here goes:
There are two (2) types of protection that is provided by a good antivirus software:
1. On-access protection
2. On-demand protection
On-access protection provides continuous computer monitoring and should be able to keep the threats out of your system or at bay (if that antivirus program is any good). It means therefore, if the antivirus is doing its job properly, once the computer was cleaned in the beginning it should always be in a "clean state".
The truth though is that some antivirus programs can be somewhat slow to react, especially to new threats, which means that a new Trojan, worm, spyware etc. may actually be able to get into your computer system without being detected. This is where ensuring that your virus definitions are always up-to-date comes in.
If you then suspect that a virus (digital nasty) may have gotten in, you can turn to the second type of protection available to you - on-demand scanning. The antivirus program should then be able to find/recognize the threat and neutralize it (keeping in mind that there is NO PERFCET antivirus software).
On-demand protection also allows for the scanning of memory card and flash drives when they are inserted into the computer.
NB: If you do feel the need to scan you system, once a month should be sufficient.
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How can you tell if your computer is infected?
http://www.jadabreo.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-i-know-if-my-computer-is.html
It would be good to also keep at least two antivirus software in your system, since the author is right that there are no perfect anti-virus software. This way, a virus that can’t be detected by one software can be detected by the other. Your programs would cover more ground.
ReplyDeleteShania Simpsons
I would not recommend having more than one antivirus program installed on the same computer at the same time since they might start "fighting" one another resulting in false-positives where one see the other as a possible virus when it is performing it's scan. It might make more sense to have a comprehensive package for example, a person can use ESET Smart Security instead of just using ESET Antivirus OR AVG Internet Security instead of just using AVG Antivirus
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