Antivirus programs were initially created to distinguish and expel PC infections. Be that as it may, with the proliferation of different sorts of malware, antivirus programs began to protect against other PC dangers as well. Specifically, current antivirus programs can shield clients from ransomware, trojans, worms, ransomware, spam, adware, spyware and other malicious programs.

A good detection rate of viruses may be achieved when using different identification methods and layers of defense such as signature-based detection, heuristics and more. When a virus is analyzed by an antivirus provider, a signature of the malicious file is added to a signature database of the provider’s antivirus program. The program then compares signatures of files on the user’s computer to the provider’s signature database. 

Viruses may begin as a solitary infection, and through changes made by different hackers, can evolve into a number of strains, called variants. Virus researchers find common areas within the code that all viruses in a family share, through an inexact match to an existing signature, and can thus create a single generic signature to perform what is known as heuristic detection. Once an infectious file is found by the antivirus software, the file, depending upon its configuration, may be immediately deleted or quarantined until the user manually decides how to proceed.