You’re pretty excited your antivirus is up and running. The firewall is “firing” from all cylinders, and your browser plug-ins are in top shape — or supposedly so. You’re sure nothing is missing as regards security patches. But wait a minute. How can you be sure that your security defenses are up to par? Are they truly working as you expected?
Test Your Antivirus
You don’t have to download a virus to test your antivirus program — that would be a disaster. You can use the EICAR test file if you want to test whether your antivirus is effective or not. This test is not an actual virus — it’s a text file with a couple of harmless code with the text, “EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!” when running in DOS. So what happens is that your antivirus if effective will respond in the same manner if it were to be a real virus.
Read Antivirus Reviews
Let’s face it; there are so many junks out there. If you want to be protected against cybercriminals and hackers, then your antivirus must be in top shape. The rate at which we are exposed daily to an online threat is alarming, so you might want to read reviews like the Total AV antivirus review to have a hold of the best antiviruses in the market.
Check Browser Plug-ins
Browser plugins are always under attacked, as they can get easily infected. Ensure to have the latest and most up-to-date version if you must stay safe online. Mozilla’s Plugin Check website is perfect for this purpose. It’s designed by Mozilla and works with so many browsers aside Firefox. It also works in Safari, Chrome, Opera, and Internet Explorer.
Scan For Vulnerable Software
On operating systems that feature central software repositories (such as Linux) or app stores—like Android, iOS, and Window 8’s Modern environment — it is not that hard to tell if all applications are up-to-date through the latest released security patches. It is the work of a single tool that carries out an automatic update. This luxury is not available with the Window desktop.
Check Protection against the Download of Compressed Malware
With a malware hidden inside a compressed file, your PC may download it. But if your antivirus program is working, it will scan the files inside the compressed file and the malware will be blocked.
Conclusion
This is by no means exhaustive. Your antivirus will not catch every virus out there–because no antivirus program is perfect. Preventing another social-engineering attack may be possible with the right antivirus program — but it can’t be 100% effective. If you want to stay in the thick of things, make it a point of duty to check Total AV antivirus review, and be in the loop of what works or not.