anti-malwareanti-spywareanti-virusterminology
Many products (such as Norton or McAfee) advertise as "anti-virus" tools or suites, while others advertise as "anti-malware" (like Malwarebytes), and even more as "anti-spyware" (Spybot S&D).
Are those terms just marketing gimmicks, or are there technical differences between what each product does?
The Avira AntiVir Rescue System is an excellent Linux-based bootable CD that allows you to scan for infections, rescue data, and repair other damaged parts of the system. It is very frequently updated, and best of all, it's free.
Avira AntiVir Rescue System is a Linux-based application that allows accessing computers that cannot be booted anymore. Thus it is possible to:
- repair a damaged system,
- rescue data,
- scan the system for virus infections.
Just double-click on the rescue system package to burn it to a CD/DVD. You can then use this CD/DVD to boot your computer.
The Avira AntiVir Rescue System is updated several times a day so that the most recent security updates are always available.
Traditionally, antivirus software heavily relied upon signatures to identify malware. This can be very effective, but cannot defend against malware unless samples have already been obtained and signatures created. Because of this, signature-based approaches are not effective against new, unknown viruses.
Heuristic analysis is an expert based analysis that determines the susceptibility of a system towards particular threat/risk using various decision rules or weighing methods. MultiCriteria analysis (MCA) is one of the means of weighing. This method differs with statistical analysis, which bases itself on the available data/statistics
In a nutshell Signature based is great for existing threats but heuristic will use algorithms to 'best guess' if a program is a virus therefore allowing it to potentially catch new viruses which are not recognised by their signatures. You also can get a lot of false positives from heuristic AV.
Best Answer
They're mostly synonymous as they are various forms of malicious software (malware). "Malware" is more broad whereas "virus" and "spyware" are more drilled down types of
malware.Generally speaking, the main differences between the antivirus makers is that some actively listen and scan files as they are loaded into memory or visible in the folder you are viewing (MSE, Avast, etc.) whereas, AFAIK, others aren't active and work to rid you of the baddies when you execute them (Malware bytes, most "Spyware" programs).
If you are looking into purchasing some software, I would read reviews on how many resources they require and if you can limit that. I know that MSE is free and you can limit CPU use, in my experience it has been pretty solid. However, at work we have McAfee and my computer is essentially unusable while it is scanning, and domain policy limits my ability to limit it in traditional ways.
It may be a good question (if it isn't already) to ask "How does someone pick a good antivirus software" or something of that nature. If you are interested, please be sure to search first!