What Are the Disadvantages of Antivirus?

Whether it is a desktop computer, a laptop, or a terminal in your office, using a PC is part of daily life. Unfortunately, so are computer viruses. Even if you don't download anything from the Internet, don't think you're safe from viruses or spyware. The latest viruses are designed to travel from one computer to another over the Internet, on their own. Therefore, having antivirus software is a must, but you should know its possible disadvantages before deciding on one.

Limited Detection Techniques

There is more than one way to detect a virus, but a major disadvantage for some antivirus programs is that they cannot use all detection techniques. According to the Oracle ThinkQuest educational foundation, virus scanners are the most common method of detection. Scanning means searching your computer for known virus code patterns. This mechanism has an inherent weakness. Any scanner can give a false alarm if the code in a pattern matches part of the code in a normal file. Worse, it might not detect the code for a new virus. To avoid this, the virus database of an antivirus program must be regularly updated.

Another technique is detecting changes made to files, especially executables (*. Exe). Programs that adopt this technique are called cyclic redundancy check (CRC) scanners. However, a CRC scanner can only detect changes if it already has information about what the files on your PC and operating system are supposed to look like. In other words, viruses that are already on your computer before the installation of an antivirus program will not be detected.

The best antivirus software uses both techniques described and complements them with verifiers and heuristic analysis. A verifier program performs an in-depth analysis of any detected virus code, to determine if it is a virus. A heuristic analysis, on the other hand, will detect or confirm the existence of the virus by looking for the symptoms or behavioral characteristics of the virus on your computer. Without these complementary techniques, a virus can escape detection.

They Do Not Fully Protect

Having an antivirus program with multiple detection methods is not enough. To avoid viruses, Microsoft Security recommends placing an Internet firewall as well. A firewall is generally a program that blocks hackers, viruses, and spyware from the Internet before they enter your computer. You can also use hardware - such as a router - to harden the firewall, especially if you use more than one personal computer to access the Internet, or if you have a small network of computers.

Slow Down Your Pc or Network

Installing and running antivirus software can use up a large amount of computer memory and hard drive space, slowing down your PC. StoreTech Systems Inc. mentions that this is true even for protecting servers and a computer network. Depending on how the personnel of an information management (MIS) or information technology (IT) company establishes virus scanning and protection, the scanning process may cause a delay in-network service for individual use of the devices. employees.

Conflicts

Since they are not equally effective, you may be tempted to install more than one antivirus program. Be careful, because as the Symantec site says: these programs can actually conflict with each other and cause them to not work properly. You will need to double-check for potential conflicts before purchasing a secondary program.