June 11th, 2009 | 
Author: Have no doubt that viruses, worms and Trojans can do some very nasty things to both your computer and your life. You know about this and you have what you consider to be the best antivirus software on your computer that you allow to update several times a day. You are also up to date with the latest security patches for your operating system and you stopped using memory sticks a long time ago one you had heard that they were a potential route for virus infection. You know all about phishing emails and you would never dream of clicking a hyperlink in the text of an email let alone opening an attachment with an exe or a zip suffix. You are also very careful about the websites you visit and would never visit one that might even be remotely dodgy. You are also up to date with Firewalls.
You have in fact done everything you can to protect yourself. So how safe are you?
The uncomfortable truth is that you are considerably less safe than you think you are or you would like to be.
The biggest threat to your security is from what is known as Zero Day Attack. The name sounds dramatic and so is the threat. A Zero Day Attack seeks to exploit vulnerabilities in a piece of software that are unknown to the vendor of the software during the time frame before the vendor provides a patch to heal that vulnerability. Windows operating systems and applications are frequently targeted by Zero Day Attacks. The moment the code becomes available hackers start to analyse it for vulnerabilities and once they are found they modify viruses and worms to take due advantage.
As your antivirus software is not yet aware of these new viruses and it might take the vendors hours or days to come up with a fix, you are vulnerable to infection. One method being developed to deal with Zero Day Attacks is the use of heuristic detection methods. Heuristic scanning is a method of detecting previously unknown viruses by attempting to analyse code for sequences that are potentially harmful or by executing code in a safe manner to determine its function. Although most antivirus programs offer this functionality to some extent, to date it remains inadequate to protect you against all possible Zero Day Attacks.
Have no doubt that viruses, worms and Trojans can do some very nasty things to both your computer and your life. You know about this and you have what you consider to be the best antivirus software on your computer that you allow to update several times a day. You are also up to date with the latest security patches for your operating system and you stopped using memory sticks a long time ago one you had heard that they were a potential route for virus infection.
Article Source: How safe is my computer? Anti-virus software.
