AVG Internet Security

Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Anti-Spam, LinkScanner & Firewall

Nowadays, there are multiple threats from Internet that casual users will need to worry about e.g. Viruses, Spywares, Trojans, Worms and Hackers. For peace of mind, AVG has all in-one-protection Internet Security package as shown below.

I have provided steps below for a casual user on how to install anti-virus into their PC and some life experiences. Read on :)

Real Life experiences

Back when I was administering multiple office networks across the region, I have seen some viruses such as “Netsky” attacking my company HQ computer network and they come in by the thousands (20,000 in a night to be precise !). from the infected remote offices as they are connected back to HQ.

Fortunately, I had an anti-virus program that was blocking these virus onslaught from entering into the Computer Data Centre which holds the company critical operations and data storage. The unsung hero (The anti-virus) did it’s job well and not a single virus came through the company network. Unfortunately, the server that runs the anti-virus had a hardware failure due to the extremely high traffic of cleaning these viruses.

I had to immediately get ready a standby server to take over the anti-virus job and later installed a clustered (DNS Round Robin did the trick !) anti-virus solution for high availability. This meant an anti-virus software is absolutely the first protection that a computer cannot do without. Guess who is the hero ?- AVG

I have also noted it has user-friendly interface and one of its popular feature is it does not take much of your computer resources. Great for those who loves simple configuration and easy usage.

Ok, get ready....here is the first Nasty that you need to protect against.....

(1) Information - Viruses

Viruses are computer programs which has these characteristics:

The program is able to self-replicate.
The program is able to activate itself. In addition, viruses spread by infecting files.

Some viruses are pretty harmless and more of a nuisance. E.g They flash a message and display the author’s birthday. However, there are those that damage your computer system, slowdown your Internet access or even steal your confidential data. Viruses can create great damage when they can pass through network of computers connected using Internet, Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN).

Computer Virus Protection

(2) Ok, how to install Anti-Virus for computer virus protection.

(a) Once you have downloaded the anti-virus, make sure you uninstall any older/existing anti-virus as it may clash with the new anti-virus.

(b) Just run the setup and the window driven installation. After installation is completed, the most important point is to make sure you download the latest computer virus protection pattern file in order to have an effective AVG Virus Protection. This is very important as an outdated security program may not be able to detect the latest viruses. Further, the AVG Control Centre allows quick access to the various settings.

Here is great tip ! If you are currently using Internet Explorer (IE), my view is it will be better to use web browser such as Mozilla Firefox. Although it has it shares of security risk, there are less attacks on these browsers compared to IE given it's popularity and link to the Windows Operating System.

Worst case scenario......

What if there is a nasty virus in your computer and the anti-virus simply cannot clean it ? As a last resort, reinstall the Operating Systems which include formatting and recreating the partition. Ensure CDs used are free from viruses. Also important here is that you have backup your critical data.

Ok you have installed Anti-Virus. Great ! Next proceed to Anti-Spyware installation section.