Although anti-virus programs won't protect you from many wireless network exploits, they will help detect malware after it's been installed, and are an important part of any security toolkit. Anti-virus programs are not perfect, however:
- They don't detect all malware, and really only can detect viruses that have already been released in the wild. This means that you can still be infected even with an anti-virus program installed.
- Many anti-virus programs add a huge amount of overhead to your system. Although there have been improvements recently, the Norton Anti-Virus suite was notorious for using tremendous amounts of system resources (processor cycles and RAM, mostly). Some benchmarks indicate that installing Norton cuts processor performance in half. This means that, if you have a 2 GHz CPU, installing Norton is like downgrading to a 1 GHz processor!
- You must maintain your virus definitions regularly. Often, the update is a scheduled task that fires off when you boot up, slowing down performance and delaying the time until you can use your computer. Many people will cancel the updates out of frustration.
Having said all that, installing anti-virus software is a good idea for most Windows computers, and you should be able to scan files or your hard drives on a regular basis to be sure you haven't been infected. Here are some free programs that can do the job:
In my
Open Source & Linux Blog, I describe how you can
Virus scan Windows using a Linux live CD using F-Prot.
