About ten years ago, anti virus programs where just about the only defense you had against nasty programs that could potentially infect your computer. Nowadays, the way of infection of your PC will most likely not come from the traditional sources like email or running a program infected by a virus. The the past, anti virus programs were mainly developed to identify the signatures of rogue programs and every week they had to be updated just to further identify any new signatures that were released by the hacking community.
Unfortunately, as the internet grew, and deployment methods became more common, the underlying technology used to release viruses also grew and finally outsmarted traditional anti virus programs. These days, chances are that you will get an infection simply by visiting the wrong sites, or the right sites which have been unknowingly infected. As malware as it is know, is able to automatically launch a number of attacking avenues onto your operating system. One common vulnerability with for example the Windows operating system is that it is commonly susceptible to buffer overflow attacks. Without the proper patching being applied with windows updates, simple visiting specially crafted sites can render many problems to your PC.
Developers of popular antivirus programs have already lost the battle to contain some of the world most clever malware. Even anti malware developers are finding the battle hard to keep up. Since the creators of this breed of attacks will also be able to test against these programs prior to releasing them to the public. In the event that you do get infected, many times none of the programs will be able to detect them, since they could be running simply under the disguise of svchost, or another runtime dll, that may look similar to the mandatory processes required by the operating system. Deployment methods and propagation of these malicious software can sometimes be as simple as a task created in windows scheduler, such as a blaster worm, or it could be crafted to use the traditional RPC services that are required for windows and other operating systems to communicate with other terminals. Either way, the safest idea and the general rule of thumb, is to disable any services and functions that you do not need for your every day computing.
In any case, the best idea is to always keep up to date with your OS vendor. As difficult and time consuming it may be, prevention is still better than cure. Before going out for the day, set your pc to auto download all the patches and Microsoft updates every month. Set your anti malware to update as often as possible. Turn off any sharing with other computers, seal your firewalling software on your routers, and always keep your firewall software handy. Most importantly, protect your hosts file and immunize your system with the many good programs that are available. These will lock down many important parts of your system, such as the registry, system32 files and user accounts. Try to only use guest accounts or accounts with lower rights than the administrator. Only use the admin account for installing any software.
PC safety should be an important aspect for your family. For those with children, protect them by using kids laptop personal computers and also teach them with educational laptops.
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